copyright 2007 Fear Knocks
Megan Burns
Family Album
hard to tell in old photographs if the infant is really sleeping, when they are already in their little coffin beds it is clear that the tiny hands have been posed to lay as if clutching the stopped chest, the lids closed for good and caught
in the fading post-mortem daguerreotype made so the black dead heart that was a mother could carry it around, look death in the eye, place it back against her breast where she hides the first infant curls, clipped from the back of the too large head, in a small locket that presses cool against her skin like the icy cheek of her baby did then-the hair will outlast them both, it will stay as
light and soft as a newborn-she will take it out to caress it against her cheek, she will look at the photo of the dead baby in her arms and think again like
she thought the day she held the child up for the photograph: that this is just a dream needing to be woken up
hard to tell in old photographs if the infant is really sleeping, when they are already in their little coffin beds it is clear that the tiny hands have been posed to lay as if clutching the stopped chest, the lids closed for good and caught
in the fading post-mortem daguerreotype made so the black dead heart that was a mother could carry it around, look death in the eye, place it back against her breast where she hides the first infant curls, clipped from the back of the too large head, in a small locket that presses cool against her skin like the icy cheek of her baby did then-the hair will outlast them both, it will stay as
light and soft as a newborn-she will take it out to caress it against her cheek, she will look at the photo of the dead baby in her arms and think again like
she thought the day she held the child up for the photograph: that this is just a dream needing to be woken up
Megan Burns, editor of the poetry magazine Solid Quarter, has been published in the New Laurel Review, Callaloo, Brown Box, YAWP Journal, and Wild Strawberries. She has been published online at horseless press, shampoo, trope_5, Exquisite Corpse, and BigCityLit. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004 by Slipstream Magazine. In 2004, she created and performed The Frida Show, a multimedia poetry play about the life of Frida Kahlo. Her chapbook, "Hago la Forma/ I am the poem" (Trembling Pillow Press, 2004) features selections from the play. She lives in New Orleans where she and her husband poet Dave Brinks run the 17 Poets! reading series. Please read her other poem, A Memory of Bones, in this issue!
photo courtesy
of Irene Yadao
of Irene Yadao