Matrescence
BY NATALIE SCENTERS-ZAPICO
I stomp my feet at the Muscovy ducks
that waddle in my path & push my hair
high, high into a yellow claw. I smile
at the high-school boys who throw rocks
at the crib I keep hidden between my eyes.
To the boys, I am just another
absentminded mother. The fathers here
use 20-gauge shotguns to kill the Muscovies,
ducks they say are uglier than sin.
No one would ever guess that like a duck
I bit a man once for sport.
For sport I’d bite a man again
just to feel like the winner. I bit a man for sport
like a father shoots a duck with a shotgun
in the evening rain. Send the fathers out to hunt
me too. Tonight the sky is a hell I long
to plunge into, & Earth is a heaven I hope
to scale like a wall. I chew my loneliness
like a Muscovy duck does a slice of Wonder Bread.
I’ve tried to die my whole life, but now I rock
the crib between my eyes to feel the pressure
of living. At home I have a child I prayed for, cried for,
went under the knife for & I feel guilty, very guilty,
for being a mother alone on this walk without her son.
