A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
(Plath, “Poppies in October”)
Have twins and you are queened,
birth more, a sow,
the small sucklers’ upturned faces
muzzle-morphed.
Don’t make it look too easy—you—
tail lifted in heat,
each long schlong thrusting. Coyly,
devote a week,
a month, a year. Bemoan your delicacy,
the way you spread
legs only for God and Country. Bite
your lip so as not
to shout, coming become jouissance,
the smallest shiver.
Take the babies round singly
in a covered pram.
Maybe, then, the neighbors will lose count
and call you ordinary.
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Devon Balwit lives scarily close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. She is the author of the collections: We Are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (a collaboration with Canadian collage artist Lorette C. Luzajik), and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). She also has a Flannery O'Connor-inspired chapbook, Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders Books) and a Moby-Dick inspired one,The Bow Must Bear the Brunt (Red Flag Poetry).