Natalia and Child
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In the end I knew no one, only a plum’s figure, only a curve above my abdomen. Here, there. Not like the Madonna, who came to know the stranger by the baby’s bite of her breast; how he had his father’s eyes but her tongue’s intuition. It is a worse kind of suffering to have my blossom stolen than to lose the bloom by my own turning wrist because it’s as if god thought winter was my only deserved season, as if he thought I was not worthy of Mary’s divine glow. But bearing is not a man’s affair. Hail Mary, seated at the right hand of the altar. How did your stone ears not hear my prayers? I thought, at least, I knew you, but I didn’t know there was fury in the immaculate heart. I too believed the woman was divine, the one god loved but still left behind. [End Page 547]
Darrel Alejandro Holnes is a writer-producer with degrees in creative writing from the University of Michigan and the University of Houston. His poetry has been published in The Caribbean Writer, The Feminist Wire, The Prague Review, and has been featured in Best American Poetry and elsewhere. He lives in New York City, where he also works.
