When Asked If I Still Want Children

I wonder if you will be hungry
when you come
to me. My only son. A mouth
like a pulpit. Fist-first.
I close my legs
to madness, men. I whisper not yet. I will
still be who I am when your voice drips
down the humid walls of me. Spark
spun, half-mute, roofing nail in the soft
sole of my foot. I’ll off your milk
like slaver, like a screen-door season.
Finger for a father. Coal for
an ovary. The lime root of a rotten
tooth. I dare you, I dog
you – choose a hole in me
and fall from it.


by Caitlin Scarano

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Caitlin Scarano is an incoming poet in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee PhD creative writing program. She is the recent winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation's Spring 2014 Orlando Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work is forthcoming in Banango Street and Indiana Review.