Pantoum For The Gyn That Asks If I Really Want More Children
By Peggy Robles-AlvaradoShe insists three kids are more than enough
Puerto Rican Tías are missing wombs
Tells me I’m still young, more than “just a mom”
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how to make her stay
By Shauna M. Morgantell her the new fragrance is nice but she doesn’t have to bathe in it
assert that sarcasm is a talent
tell her that her salwar or lappa is weird and take her to the mall for khakis
do so until she stops wearing that colorful garb
En la Casa de Mami Tita
By Tatiana Figueroa RamirezI wake up to the alarm clocks
of cocks & gallinas struggling
for their corner of the callejón.
Step out
on the preheated concrete.
Saraswati praises your name even when you have no choice
By Purvi ShahYou had a name no one
could hold between their
teeth. So they pronounced
a good woman would never
By Sylvia Beatofor years you told no one
how you cried yourself to sleep
after the doctor held your hand
Naked in the Macy’s Changing Room Trying to Think of Anything Other Than the Election
By Barbara Costas-BiggsBefore I was grown and called lovers
lovers. Before I was a mother and called
momma. Before I considered myself anything
And Still They Come (for Dr. Sue)
By Gordon CashYou scream your bullhorn lies, intimidate,
Harass, respect no law of man. You speak
Of scalpels, sutures, and sterility,
Dismemberment, death by regret, all lies,
And bear false witness with each one against
WHAT IT WAS LIKE
By Catherine KlatzkerThe world was always a place of silence,
of congenital shame—even before those days
in 1967, four years before you met your love. Your
strength grew belatedly, fertilized as it was in the
knowledge that you were nothing. Your life did
not matter to anyone, except to hurt you.
YOUR COUNTRY AND EVERYONE IN IT
By Abby Minor1. [July 2013 Millheim, Pennsylvania]
This is how you miscarry on purpose, with pills:
this is how you eat a sack of tattered peonies.
With stippled petals in your mouth, this is how
you set the little sunset-
judgement call
By Amber Flamelike heartbreak, you are sure
that your story is different. felt
not worst but not exactly
explainable to anyone else