"Pregnant, 1951"

Mouth Work (St Andrews University Press, 2016) has many poems inspired by life in the family. “Pregnant 1951” imagines August of that year when my parents had been married seven months and I was two months away from being born. The poem is based partly on stories I’ve heard (the fainting in the street, the silk blouse), partly on my own observation (Daddy’s scars and his habit of sleeping with one arm held straight up), partly on imagination. Towards the end of the poem, fiction takes over.

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Pregnant
1951
Elopes. Pregnant the first week. 
Turns eighteen. Glows. 
At commencement, her mama’s face
burns, but she is proud to show
the bulge beneath her skirt--

her life-till-now’s work.
The world is her bouquet--
dogwood with ten-penny wounds,
lacy fringe tree, meadowsweet,
morning glory in the hay.

In idle August, she hauls her belly
to the store for a Co-Cola.
The streets under her soles are
soft and hot as pudding. 
The heat puddling the blacktop

looks so wet she could mop it up
and wring it into a cup,
but she sees it rise and shimmy
like her one silk blouse on the line.
She faints on Goolsby Street.

Night. He sleeps. Aroused
by heat and thunder, she
fingers the gouge in his cheek
from a knife fight over dice.
She runs her hand over his thighs,

caressing the old wound puckered
by a nail in a loose board. 
To him, she’s already Mama. 
He’s Daddy to her. She sighs,
My man, all mine.

He turns on his side. His arm rises
like a flag. The hand above her
hovers for hours as he sleeps. 
The first weeks she hardly slept,
afraid it might collapse. 

Always done it, he swears. But now,
she fears no blow or punch
from his hand that’s clenched
as if it holds dice and cocked
as if about to throw craps.  

Posted 3 August 2024. Send comments to [email protected].