Nursery
BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
In high school, boys hardly ever noticed me, and when they finally did
years later, I could not imagine making a life with them. One called me
the N-word when I was seven. I needed a restraining order for another.
I almost got used to riff-raff. So it still seems a surprise I ever had
the occasion to set up a nursery of my own. When I found out a boy
kicked inside—a bright panic perfumed me and to be honest, never
left. I know almost nothing of boys but their father proved to me
a boy can grow to be a gentle man. If you look around, there is plenty
of gentle to celebrate: a male Darwin frog keeps a nursery in his own
mouth, the leap of tadpoles is a reverse gobble-drool and what trust—
he won’t even fever for a bite (and he never does!) as they jump
to pondlife and many breakfasts of chewy wings. The male seahorse
carries the dark swell himself in his brood pouch until he throws
a parade ending with a confetti of gallops. Scientists still don’t know
where whale sharks give birth. I wish I could freeze the morning
I came down the stairs and found my two boys still in matching
pajamas, quietly drawing sea creatures. I wish we’d keep some secrets
underwater. Let us never find a nursery of those gentle giants. Let
them swim and grow into schoolbus-sized sharks, without ever
gliding into nets or boats. I wish for unsolved equations and maps
of the ocean always unfinished. I wish it full of unspooled, unfurled
tentacles solving for X where Y means silver-bubbled plankton,
and C means a whole cadre of shrimp scuttling for cover—
an orange scarf vanishing into the coral when you swim too close.
Animals in Fall
BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
A major bird-collision event occurred in Chicago, IL in 2023, killing nearly 1,000 migrating birds, the highest number on record…the birds died after colliding into the McCormick Place Lakeside Center during the height of their annual fall migration.
—American Bird Conservancy
News of yet another bird strike
from too many lights, too many panes
of glass. When we work at night
with lights on, we might as well be
a snake thieving yet another blue egg
into its ridiculous mouth. And still—
I love the night for the quiet. I love
the night for the sounds. I love to think
under the sound of birds migrating
above me and just a line of faint pink
just beginning to ink above the trees.
For my children, the days of dress-up
for Halloween are gone. For years
I pinned felt tentacles, stitched feathers
to their hoodies, or made a light-up mask
from papier mâché and cardboard. Today,
the boys drove off to school; one quiet,
one surly over who knows what slight.
So much of what I thought I’d remember
have fluttered away. Each poem is a soft scrap
we tuck and poke into our nests. But why
should all of this make me cry? As soon
as they were able, we taught them how
to swim, undulate, pulse, and fly.
Green Love Poem
BY AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
Over the years, my feelings for you
are a tweeblaarkanniedood—a plant
that never dies. The leaves just grow
and grow, some lasting older
than catfish, older than cenotes.
When the first tender shoots
of lettuces unfurl, the green grows
fresh, electric in our garden, taste
that good crunch in the first bowl
of salad each year. If you don’t eat
a nectarine outdoors while you squint
in the sun, and a few drops of juice
land on your shirt, can you really say
it’s summer? What if indigo buntings
call out their little thwips and nobody
answers back to their syllables except
the squeak of tomatoes rubbing
together in the bucket of my skirt.
I celebrate you in sunshine,
I celebrate you on my tiptoes—
my whole neck stretched up
to receive your kiss. I unlock
you with a brass skeleton key
for a greenhouse filled with globes
of citrus. But there is your skin.
My bottom lip. My hands greedy
to learn how to rake it all up. How
to drink from a very full cup.
