In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Babies
  • Sue Ellen Thompson (bio)

On a plane, my mother would roam the aisles in search of a wailing infant she could calm by pacing up and down with him, smiling her I'm-in-heaven smile. Or I'd come home to find a crib set up in my room for a neighbor's child. The top of the family pyramid was always reserved for whoever had produced the most recent offspring. So it was with a sense of something not quite right that I stood up at her funeral and surveyed a sea of aging faces in a room of unearthly quiet. Devoted to her own and others' progeny as she was, and as a reward for her swift dying, couldn't there have been a baby crying?

Sue Ellen Thompson

Sue Ellen Thompson is the author of This Body of Silk (Northeastern University Press, 1986), The Wedding Boat (Owl Creek Press, 1995) and The Leaving: New & Selected Poems (Autumn House Press, 2001). The poems that appear here are from a fourth collection, The Golden Hour, which will be published by Autumn House in 2006.

...

pdf

Share