Mary Fontana
Delivered
—an instant late we look
where the gulls
have gathered, shrieking,
the shredded knot
now drawing open, its center
red and wet,
the just-calved
creature anonymous already,
one more newborn
on the seal-tiled beach:
a stone heaved bodily from
hush
to honk and squall,
to crush, to quarry,
a vessel wrecked on earth—
and struck
like bells our hearts
swing on their rope
as an auction block
of beaks carves up
the afterbirth
Mary Fontana is the author of Strangers in the Province of Joy, a narrative history of migration across the US-Mexico border. Her writing has appeared in The Sun, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, SWWIM and elsewhere. Her poems took second place for the 2026 Frederick Morgan Award. She lives in Seattle.