Kate Puxley, Untitled (from The Hunting Lodge), 2016
Mixed media
6” x 8”
He never mentions the mother,
her brave openings or hoary sounds.
So into my book of nightmares
I add my own rude body,
the tulle cry built within me,
rosemesh cloud of my womb—
Kinnell, I made this girlchild.
I have written on the deep vellum
of mother & babe, stared into the sea glass
lights above prodding my red world,
the birth not cutting ties from the darkness,
but letting it lope free, the pearlized
cord pulsing with lightness, from my lucent
matter to hers. I spit the sound
of madness and being from my twisted mouth.
And from my softest tissue,
a sprout of red hair, a gaping life-wound,
the audacity of umbilici and blood.
She and I, this strange world ahead.