She doesn’t want children
and the unfortunate bloodless sample
is a tissue of crushed head
white and yellow and
wet.
 
It’s fluid and light and
few as her
issue screams voiceless and blind to
itself like an invisible sonogram
of the disjointed family
here, in the welfare office,
the only thing keeping a mother and child
wrapped in the same skin
is defiance.
 
This is
what happens
to godless children, they accused
in black and Right. Here lies
bore from her thighs
 
North Carolina’s Senator
 
I salute you with a wire hanger
twisted cross and a peroxide
martini--
the morning after the mourning
mounting her chest. Skirt choking
her ankles
Lips muffled neck cuffed by
his love.
 
Meanwhile, there are good
Christian women who would
kill to be you and so fertile
so fruitful but God is deaf to
their prayers or the
women’s auxiliary group
is not howling
at the lunar waning glow
loud enough, like wolves
licking at their virtue in
the corners of Demeter’s Spring
Uterus. They stank of good intentions
Wore the coat of a friend          when
they asked her if she wanted to
deprive her daughter
of a rich and educated life
if she wanted her son to
grow up a heathen
in a godless loveless world
she shook her head no
no        I cannot bear
the Name Mother
her head shook
and       his eyes welled inside
her
cries     echoed hysteric
into the far reaches of
her womb no
no,       I can’t
here take this child
raise it up
in your Christian arms
raise it up
to be    someone
who will look down and
laugh at me
like this God
I love so dearly.
 
Published by Matador Magazine

Amy Ouzoonian is a poet, playwright and editor of three anthologies of poetry. She is the author of a book of poems, Your Pill (Foothills Publishing 2004). She is also the editor of A Gathering of the Tribes magazine issue #13 and a board member of Tribes non-profit organization. She has had two of her plays produced off broadway and will have her third play, Of Love and Bush, produced in September at WOW cafe Theater. Ouzoonian lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY.