TAMARA PANICI
AFTERMATH, MOTHERHOOD
she’s born and suddenly—
suddenly—everything is part dying animal—there in the grass
toes dirty with chipped-off turf, a small child, small as a rabbit,
fingers wrapped around a crow’s shriveled feather—standoffish
mothers in outerwear the color of their skin, their children in
kitten head dresses and shark tooth hats—my daughter is here
but not, just as I am, just as I believe—some days it’s true: I am
an intentionally placed figure, a doll of someone I have not yet been—I am here
or somewhere like here, in a dress one size too large and two sizes too short—
I let the sun in on my cleavage and knees—I am without my grandmother’s
headless chickens—l am without old hymns to ward off being boiled
alive in the afterlife—I am without a fruited branch and without vinegar
to ward off mosquitoes—I am with my daughter, who is small but heavy
as a stone—I, my hips, my chest, the ending sea of my body,
the ache where the next sea bubbled and grew warm, my wounds
break open like crushed bone—they shatter on synthetic earth—
children scatter—they spread like kicked ants, then like feathers in the wind—
my daughter crawls towards the girl with the crow’s feather—
it must be an omen—no, I must make it into an omen—I can only
gelatinize memory—I make it soft enough to swallow—
I make it easy to choke—I have tried to suffocate myself
more than once—more than once through colored metal
and blue-green ground—I look for anyone I could know
as little as I know myself—my daughter, jewel of my own primordial soup,
glowing bile, she has cracked me open—
her popsicle melts in my back pocket—my body is its own soft globe of warmth—
my body, is a small pond where I hope my daughter began her death
long and eventless, without memory of slit pigs and beheaded chickens—I,
beast of ancient fear, I pray to the blood-loving god of mother country—
I pray my daughter melts away like untouched snow—
my daughter, ripest peach—to my daughter, I slither—I am a snake—
I hoard blood memory—I tear myself open—to keep her safe,
I swallow her whole.
Tamara Panici‘s work has appeared in places like POETRY, Black Warrior Review, Waxwing, The American Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. She lives in DC with her partner and their child.