More on: Poetry

Katherine Mooney Brooks on art, illness, and the failures of the body

We played a word game on the mountain, / spelled cuneiform, spelled thoracic: / / the game’s strict rules / encourage motion / / up through thistles, saffron, / yellow stains

this is / not your tragedy this is / a scrap a slip a fragment/ a swatch of fabric cut / off the roll

Son’s / net-/ works / / veins under / the skin / of the dark / / call / see/ knock! / / a chandelier / glows / in the dark

Our bare hands redden as we work, / he high on the ladder cutting the old / connections, and I drilling / outlet hole through the siding.

And my flesh, my body, held

the kingdom of God, and if it’s a place that’s a place
for children, then most of what I know really doesn’t matter.

You carry our son in a locket
you hang around your neck

each morning, a way, I guess,
of carrying what isn’t and what is

In my mind,

my son cannot be nowhere, and yet I cannot imagine
where he is, except here, growing older inside me.”

You are two atomized
in one, our molecules
become wild air that whims
the world…

Katharine Blake on birth.