Darwin’s mother
BY SARAH ROSE NORDGREN
I
He lolled on her belly like
a piglet on a sow, his skin
caked in white paste.
A draught lifted her
ruffled collar, and Darwin’s
mother’s memory of pain
was just now seeping
out of her. He was taken away
and then, in a moment,
placed back in her lap, prim
and dry. Newly civilized
in lace and linen. Darwin’s
mother recoiled in sullied
silk and ribbon when she first
saw his face: In a way, he was
already a man, therefore
discomfited by the smell
of her good clean blood.
II
In God who formed one body
after another in my middle
like the red speck growing in a yolk
to fill the egg with feathers
and folded bones
lies perfection.
And in the fragile egg, its shell
weak and broken open
like chips of sky, fine pottery,
breathes a red and fluttering clot
prone to illness and sin.
Like God, I give birth to men
so they might build a church
and a government over me,
making it easy for me
to become
transparent, a strip of gauze
hung over a side chair or pinned up
in the chapel or garden
so the silhouettes of columbines
will show through my skin.
III
The door at the top of the stair,
a black velvet gown,
her curiously constructed
work-table, death-bed –
these are all of what
I remember of my eighth year,
since after my sisters’ grief
placed coins on our lips,
her name disappeared.
