After Miscarriage, Breast Milk: The Nine Lives of Suicide

After Miscarriages Breast Milk:  Her Nine Lives

of Suicide

I have.  Don’t think I haven’t.  I have.  The cross-

            beams in the basement?  Those brown chains spread

            like concussions of a burial dirt, the rough

            cut hardwood of this old house is sloughing

            off its umber.  No: the window into the this cellar

            is blacked by grass and shadow, clods and sods

            that push the crowds of air along through the cracks.

            Because air sneaks in, the way water sneaks in, it finds

            my one place along my bit lip and slips in, clothed head

            to toe unnoticed and sets, pectin quiet.

I have, ok, I have.  If not those chains the shiny

            kitchen knives I take to beef, slice through

            grizzle as through suet.  It's like just- whipped-       

            after- dinner- cream, though no pain at all but this

            tepid bath he’d, in mornings, boil for me and carry to the tub

            and rub my skin my scalp and I wanted to I did, slip

            under the bubble of it, near the plug, lift it...

            but I couldn’t feel a thing other than the water

            going cold and the goose sprung when I stood, I couldn’t

            holding my arms wide as wings wanting to lift the sky

            that had fallen down on them and push it aside

            like the absolute weightless thing it was supposed to be

            but wasn’t.

I have.  The chains, the blades, the lye in the barn, the warm

            stretch of skin and throat beneath each palm’s consideration

            and all those gone-before-me-babies preparing the table...

            my only living boy gone just the other day?  A year ago? and the new one

            getting ready, I know the cramps I know the blood 

            in the tin bowl will be a bawl stuffed with her nearly noticeable

            fist, like hunger, the way Merrill would cram his in, so deep in,

            it was food until I could bring my milk to a bead, two, three, like poppies

            in their pods, and later a squeezed cheesecloth, each deep, 

            drawn from God knows how sleep.  And the relief peace the after.

            Not like now.  The chap the scab I can't let

            alone.  They fill again.  They spread like legs when I lay and leak on

            their brink again, but not right away.  Slow.  A plugging duct.  Slow,

            the close sway of a hanging thing, paused, paused, the blue

            stilling of the sucked up then tightly gagged noose.  

I don't.  You know I don't.  But I can.  I want to and I can.  The table's

            set.  Sit.  Sit.