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30 Dec 2024
Anna
Shelton
New
Moon
Jan 13th
Dec 15th
Motherhood
After Jon Stone’s poem Mustard
She watches him navigate the moor,
the mist of adolescence, lowers her head, red
eyes brimming each time his mood
turns. He was once her hero,
back when it was the two of them
against the world, back when she could dote
on every sharpened kick inside her bellied dome;
he never knew the pains she rode
through as she birthed him, how she oohed
and aahed and ouched inside the room
where hell became a hospital, where his first home
was hacked apart to set him – hot
and screaming purple – free. How a horde
of Doctors left her, a month to term,
alone for five long hours, until she – the abandoned other –
felt motherly no more.
Behind the poem...
Inspired by Jon Stone’s Mustard, my poem has anagrams of its title at the end of every line. In fact, guided by Stone, I used a variation of Terrance Hayes’ poetic form ‘A Gram of &s’ – one that’s a little looser with the rules. I chose ‘motherhood’ as my title, as it conjures up conflicting emotions in me. I struggle, still, with the feelings of loss I experienced after my son’s traumatic birth; our early bond broken by the horrors of a hospital stay gone wrong.