Maternalique on the Monster's Bride
- Maternalique on the Monster's Bride
n. a poem written on the occasion of deciding to have a child
Here's what the storytellers get wrong.Sometimes love enters the worldfor all the wrong reasons.With its wide eye and bushy tail.Hardly a kick or whinny.
My loneliness is not like yours.Like the panther on the ashtrayleaping perpetually toward some child.
For me it is a simpler desire.Breakfast lunch and supper.I know tomorrow doesn't holdsome key, some prey. Some knife shinedat a table set so that my daughtercan see herself most pretty.
See how the birds yearn into the air—into the thought of its long, dark hair.The moon on a string like Adam's rib there.
What jelly in the head makes usdo it, what melodrama of the moon?What need by birthright to deadringour light, what desire which can goone way like the harpoon?
Sometimes life enters the worldfor all the wrong reasons. Seethese men not knowing full well whento leave well enough alone, as oneknows to pull back a hand from wax. [End Page 37] Her newborn shock of white goneright up their backs. Her hissinglike a swan as it all as it all falls down. [End Page 38]
Stacy Gnall is the author of the poetry collections Dogged (winner of the 2021 Juniper Prize for Poetry from University of Massachusetts Press, 2022) and Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books, 2011). She completed her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. She also has an MFA from the University of Alabama and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, she currently lives and teaches in Nevada and will be joining University of Detroit Mercy's English Department as Poet-in-Residence in fall 2022.
