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First the soft plug comes, pulls away
the seal, sends a message written
in mucous, slippery notice all you held
inside is pushing soon toward light, freedom.
How did this flimsy fragment of a shield
hold life in?
Mound of flesh,
lining of blood,
inevitable delivery waiting in the sac.
We held our breaths throughout incubation,
discontent blooming from a seed. Your voice,
mine, encased, enclosed
in the smooth amnion of things required,
wrapped a life in skin and membrane,
insulated from each others’ true organic substance.
First the soft plug comes,
warm night deciding this could no longer be
contained. Your hatred.
My weariness. Your resentment,
my distress. Our mismatched determination
holding all of this suspended for a time.
First the soft plug, then the waters,
all the years’ protection, growth of anger
fully formed pressing toward first entrance of air,
caught in the vise of legal convocations—
your attorney pressing down,
my attorney pressing out,
weeks between contractions.
I have chosen to name her Desiderata,
dance the Tarantella when she comes,
dark seed, long awaited, change of life child,
blood red, crying at the sound of a final gavel.
Rose M. Smith is a three-time member of Columbus, Ohio's National Poetry Slam team and a well-loved member of that city's active poetry community. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals and anthologies, including Main Street Rag, Chiron Review, Poems from the Big Muddy: The 2004 National Poetry Slam Anthology, Poetry Motel, Concrete Wolf, Good Foot, The Iconoclast, Pavement Saw, Pudding Magazine, and African Voices Magazine. She is author of Shooting the Strays (Pavement Saw Press 2003) and A Woman You Know, the Requested Poems (Pudding House Publications 2005) and an Associate Editor at Pudding House Publications.
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