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After The UPS Man Shouted “Feed Your Baby At Home” Through His Truck Window

By Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

       Beaufort, North Carolina May 2007

 

Bionic Feeding Woman
whips breasts out, sprays
privacy netting over him,
through the window. She slays

public ignorance. Offensive,
angry and green, she stays
right where she is, extensive
superpower network plays

the news: Continental Airlines,
2003, Deborah Wolf charged
a terrorist during times
of war for milky discharge

in the face of passenger
complaint; Toys R Us
September 2006, stranger
for a children's store to fuss

when Chelsi Meyerson
busted out her right to feed
in the store's corner, shunned
by five harassing employees

who called security. Cover-up!
Applebees' manager told
Brooke, mother of 8. Cover up!
insisted the United steward,

throwing a used blanket across
Alina and her baby Rose.
Captain Areola, Boob Boss,
Mutant Nipple, each goes

on nursing, fighting the disease
of propriety like diaper rash,
growing muscles, curing degrees
of fever with a stubborn milky cache.
Added: Monday, June 30, 2014  /  Used with permission.
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor
Photo by Stephen G. Bridges

MELISA "Misha" CAHNMANN-TAYLOR, Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the author of Imperfect Tense (White Point Press, 2016), and co-author of three books, Teachers Act Up: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre (Teachers College Press, 2010) and Arts-Based Research in Education (Routledge, first edition 2008; second edition 2018).  2018 she was the plenary speaker at the English Teachers Association of Israel in Jerusalem.

Winner of three NEA “Big Read” Grants (Robinson Jeffers, Edgar Allan Poe, Yu Hua), the Beckman award for "Professors Who Inspire Social Change," and a Fulbright for nine-month study of adult Spanish language acquisition in Oaxaca Mexico, she is also the poetry editor for Anthropology & Humanism and judges the journal’s annual ethnographic poetry competition. A graduate of the New England College low-residency MFA program and the University of Pennsylvania’s Educational Linguistics doctoral program, her numerous poems, essays, and articles about language learning have appeared in the Georgia Review, American Poetry Review, Women’s Quarterly Review, Cream City Review, Barrow Street, Puerto Del Sol, Mom Egg, Anthropology and Humanism, Language Arts, TESOL Journal, and many other literary and scholarly homes. She posts events and updates at her blog http://teachersactup.com.  She lives in Athens, GA with her husband and two children.

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