Grandmother, choking on the
stink of pig, her hands wrapped
around the throat of a chicken,
snapping its neck clean. Dirt up
under her nails. Once she dreamt
of being a teacher. She could read.
Her hair, never cut—
afraid she’d lose her strength—
grew into one long silver whisker
to her knees. Married off at the
age of thirteen, she never left the
farm until they carted her off in
in a truck. To a home where bitter
drones tied her down
with bleached bed-sheets
and she rocked and clutched
a plastic baby-doll to her breasts, recalling
the blood of birthing thirteen
children to a man she never
much liked.
Mother, suffocating under
plastic-covered furniture and
waxy fruit in silver bowls, kept
five children squeaky clean, yet
wore widow’s black each time she
gave birth. Her hair kept slick-raven
to remind her of coal country,
where she never wanted to
return. Stacked high in the closets:
glossy shoes, still in their boxes,
the soles hardly worn.
Reminding her of all the places
she never walked after
her husband up
and left without a trace; shoes that
didn’t fit any of her girl-children.
Her last labored breath in
a scrubbed-pale room, an unknown
nurse perched over her. The humming of an
oxygen mask carrying
her forward.
Daughter, plucking out
feverish images
while teaching like Grandma wanted,
like Mama begged her to
on her death bed. Cradling the details. Hushing the
wounds. Her only child, unborn, cut away,
with a portion of its passageway. Words born against
their will. A line of hyphens stitched
across the fallopian tube, and her naval still, now,
feeling the acid touch
of the umbilical cord that ties
the four of them, the dead, the unborn,
the birthed and the dying,
together, upon the birthing table where
the words tumble forth, roll, and turn,
readying for a breach birth.
Margo Williams holds an MFA from Emerson College and teaches Creative Writing and Literature. Her publications include fiction, poetry, drama, interviews, and reviews. She is a produced playwright ("Snake Oil," 2008) and several of her poems have been turned into short film or performance pieces at Thalian Hall in Wilmington, NC. Other works appear in Beacon Street Review, Glimmer Train, The Southeast Review, Frostwriting, Encore, and Behind the Scenes. Margo is a 2008 Hambidge Fellow.
