On Childbearing
Rent from DeepDyve- On Childbearing
I’ve never lived in a place big enough For a panic room I leave butter on the counter The milk to sour Stay up too too late To remember why I wept Over the death Of million dollar baby Only that shortly after I took up Boxing And long hot baths in bio Cellulose sheet masks I don’t worry When falling asleep how I nearly drown Looking like friday the 13th I like unlucky numbers the random hours I keep go to bed with crumpled poems Between the sheets My friends with children say no children Means always being on holiday And that I have it so good You aren’t here yet To take that personally I forget Birthdays grocery lists sunscreen no business Raising hell yet I’m on many a shit list Rarely is anything about me on fleek Most days I crave flesh like a caged lioness Fattened goose liver and veal and jelly beans No greens I’ve eaten for lunch in public [End Page 20] Spaces taken up two seats With my handbag I can barely take Care of my handbag I have no business In the kitchen doing laundry can’t separate All the colors running together the dry cleaners Flag me down on the street I don’t like to carry The kind of weight I know I’ll need Dearest would be I fear you In ways I can’t take personally And I can’t promise Any more than this That the only way I know how to live is to go Down with the ship I would be the very last Beating the drum Until its skin Gives [End Page 21]
Rosebud Ben-Oni, born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, is a recipient of the 2014 nyfa Fellowship in Poetry and is a CantoMundo Fellow. She is the author of SOLECISM (Virtual Artists Collective) and an editorial advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry, the American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, and Arts & Letters, among others. She blogs weekly for the Kenyon Review. Visit www.7TrainLove.org.
