Night Feeding
It’s hot snow dripping on the plain
of your stomach, the child’s desperate mouth
rooting till you rub your breast
against his cheek to orient him.
All night long he wakes every two hours
and his sucking tows you inside yourself,
tugs you beneath the muscles of your face
and neck and into the muscle of your heart.
You are all water, all milk, from the soup
of the pelvis to your wet eyes,
you are sour desire thrumming, the cord
he pulls reaching into your ankle,
you feel it there, it travels up
the inside of your leg, travels
to the nipple itself as you
release and empty yourself,
your back to the window where
the moon lulls the trees to sleep
and brushes your shoulders. It’s all
more than you could have hoped. To be
so alone with him, so undone
by exhaustion, gazing at what
you made—at the cloudy drink that ebbs
in the corners of his mouth,
at the child staring back
with blue eyes; both of you
rocking outside of time toward
a milkless future, both of you
rocking and you trying not
to fall asleep, to have this hour
in its fullness, weeping breasts and
hungry baby and you still large
with creation, burning where
he left you ripped and bloody,
as if he’d dug his tunnel through you,
from nothing, dug his way here
where you sustain him with this
blue milk, this light, streaming.
Mary’s Blood
It was Mary’s blood made him, her blood
sieved through meaty placenta to feed him,
grow him, though Luke wrote she was no more
than the cup he was planted in, a virgin
no man ever pressed against or urged
who could barely catch eyes with the towering
angel but felt God come to her like light
through glass, like a fingerprint left on glass;
still, it’s hard to believe she never wanted
to be rid of the thing inside her, wasn’t
shamed carrying him, the child’s
perfect head pointing at the ground
and rubbing her cervix like the round earth
rubbing the thin wall of the sky that holds it.
All women reach the time of wanting it out
but not wanting it out, not knowing
what’s coming, so she must have spread
her legs in anguish because what was inside
pressing her membranes for release
was both herself and a stranger;
and she must have cried out
as the small head crowned,
splitting her, her pelvis swung
wide to push him through the wall
of this world, till what came from her
was a child lit with her own gore,
soiled, everything open so her inside
was now outside, cracked open, it means
mother to crack open, to be rent
by what comes to replace her. Such
is love—the only way. It was Mary’s
blood made him: his eyes, tongue,
his penis, her milk fattened his legs,
made hair on the crown of his head,
she grew caul to wrap him and door
to come through and nothing, not even
crying Father, Father, to the warped
blue sky can change it.
