J.L. Conrad
Postlude
or, last things first
He is born in the year
the world is supposed to end.
I avoid horoscopes because
I do not want to know how it will all
turn out.
Pain centers itself in the spine.
Toes wind and unwind. The back arches.
There is a tendency to remove oneself
from the site of trauma, to speak
of oneself as another.
A wet cloth on the forehead.
On the television—is this possible?—a crackling fire.
When we leave the room, there are
towels on the floor, water in the tub, white sheets
tangled on the bed.
But that isn’t right. The bed leaves too.
I am on the bed.
Then, laid out on a table, arms strapped. White lights glaring
overhead. See the blue curtain.
What happens on the other side
remains invisible to my eyes but clear
to everyone else.
I’m afraid that I won’t wake up I say.
Frankly, it was hard to leave you there you tell me later.
Hear the cry. The doctor’s hands
working on him in the corner.
He comes out willing. Ravenous,
as if the pressing of birth had pressed into him
a deep hunger. He does not seem angry.
Later, his profile in the bassinet
a slant of light on the brick wall beyond
the window. Is this the eclipse?
I remember asking.
I cannot tell you if I fed the baby.
The records say that I did feed the baby.
There are visitors.
There are photographs of these visitors.
The visitors are known to me.
The grandmother wears a light yellow shirt.
Children born on eclipses are intense, caught between
two worlds, one foot in each.
I measured my life
by that date, thinking
by then I will be ready only
I was not.
A watery half-moon, its light in reeded strips.
Anterograde
Tell me again how it goes.
At the day’s opening, a baby.
A slippage, as if underwater, and
the fear of not waking.
We waited for the best time.
I was never the only one in the room.
Now, the baby sleeps in front of
a tree strung with lights. The dog
settled beneath a line of paper snowflakes.
How strange I remark to have lived
a whole day and not remember
despite all the evidence.
Lately I have taken to making
one cup of tea, then another.
A dream of three women on an escalator.
That was before you had your children one said.
Skin knits itself across, nerves re-
joining. The scent of cedar-or-is-it-spruce.
Recognize that some things are not lost
to you. The baby’s skin sweet like honey
the child is saying. We are removing
all traces of ______ from the busy house.
It’s a little late to be asking such questions
you tell me. I say have you ever felt
anything so soft. It is true there was
always going to be an egress window.
J.L. Conrad is the author of the full-length poetry collections A World in Which (Terrapin Books) and A Cartography of Birds (LSU Press), as well as several chapbooks, including Recovery (Texas Review Press), Not If But When (Salt Hill), and This Natal House (forthcoming from Harbor Editions). Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Sugar House Review, Jellyfish, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.