MR Sheffield
1-800-PREGNANT WOMAN
i.
we’re told pregnant women are greeting
cards diffuse glow filtered lighting soft amber
reality is lacework electrified nerve endings
but don’t say that aloud images require
careful curation a museum of pregnant
ladies smoothing shea butter over tight skin
hello do you want this nevermind
ii.
the blood and the amniotic fluid and the shit and the vernix and the meconium and the IV and the stitches and the catheter and the infections and the slow slow healing some women say they’re up and walking around Target the next day that very day some say they’re barely out of the hospital already fucking their addled partners the vagina is an organ it can grasp like a hand but what do I know about that anyway I’m four cesarean sections deep into motherhood and I never just popped out of bed the next day ready to skip down a shimmering rainbow gently nuzzling my newborn cub but maybe that’s a function of my age or ill health or shit body last time there was this bruise purple as space smeared across my abdomen the doctor even prescribed extra percocet no questions or paperwork required so you know it was pretty fucked I was pretty fucked the female body a joke we tell each other or a horror always both always the other it’s why I say pregnant woman it’s why I say female body
iii.
I said hello, are you there? Did you order a pregnant woman?
Yes.
Great, and do you want our boutique birthing experience complete with unmedicated, natural labor, or are you a callous baby of a woman willing to poison your freshly born innocent with lidocaine and fentanyl? I bet you haven’t even asked about the hepatitis vaccination. Don’t know what’s in baby formula. You goddamn fucking absolute goblin piece of
Is it extra?
Yes, but you can use this app to split the cost into manageable monthly payments, or do you simply hate children?
Okay, sure, whatever.
iv.
and when she’s held up aloft
she becomes a sort of swirling void
aubergine crow feathers a beat you can’t
escape she will burrow into bone becoming
inextricable from you what I’m trying
to say is this is not a simple
sentiment it’s whole other spinning galaxies
v.
I mean lovelorn women feeling an emptiness so great it makes us catch our breaths crying out I do not want this but I want this friends lecture on how the world is crumbling and drowning and dying simultaneously and why bring a child into it so at least for all the trouble we’re expecting something maybe light and lovely what is delivered is heavier than the urge to breathe is blood and blood and is blood and blood and blood and is blood all over everywhere everything coated in glistening red luster no return address no warranties no exchanges no takebacks no comebacks no quits
don’t write poetry about your children
Say fuck it
cloudburst violet star
rain one million
tiny white spiders
translucent legs spinning
at four years
old nearly five
his slight body
rages remember fat
baby face dusting
of hair along
his newborn shoulders
now he hurtles
through pollinated air
thick yellow coating
his clothes his
hands his eyelashes
I hate you
mommy I hope
you die blurred
green green green
as trees shoot
up and out
mommy will always
love you my
whole body dissolving
trying to breathe
what to do
with this immense
love most spiders
aren’t venomous that
wasn’t a brown
recluse skittering away
he holds himself
from me I
fold him into
my chest he
kicks free anyway
comparison is the thief of joy and all that or whatever
i.
that voice saying there’s something
wrong with you echoes across consciousness
slips beneath the surface of cerulean
oceans clips along with hurried feet and slow
guttural no no no no no
ii.
my sister had an uncomplicated
natural birth she caught the baby herself clasped
her to her breast I wasn’t there I imagine vernix
white and sticky streaked across her forehead
baptismal my sister her wife and their minutes old infant
impossible in her beauty eyes unfocused
searching searching for mothers grasping
catching their fingers their hair wildly flung
into moro reflex her perfect little elf face
slack in sleep
iii.
but just because the voice is everywhere
within everyone doesn’t diminish its roar
if anything it’s amplified what do you think
happens during dreams it’s sometimes a litany
let us count the ways
iv.
do the babies hear it too do they turn and press
their mouths into howls how different my births
four c-sections do you know you’re not even supposed
to have one and here I am collecting them like trading cards
the anesthesiologist quiet behind me can you feel
that is this okay the tugging interior deep
not painful but how can anyone survive this one baby
when he was pulled from me made no sound silence
like a thick heady poison is he okay is he okay is he okay he’s fine
mama, relax
v.
One time I had acupuncture and the guy goes
I’ve never seen anyone so relaxed and simultaneously
anxious your heart is racing it always is but so is
everyone’s racing headlong into obliteration
the creek water rising and rising
vi.
until falling roundleaf greenbrier twisted catching
bare ankles baby perfect curled a comma in my arms
MR Sheffield’s book, Marvels, (Sundress Press 2018) is a work of experimental poetry and art. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have been published in Epiphany, The Florida Review, Black Warrior Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other publications. She has a collaborative art/poetry project on Instagram: @sadchildrenstoys.