Feed
by Emily Mohn-Slate
Wind whips the umbrella on the porch like a ship’s sail
I watch it twist and lean over the counter eating numb-eyed
The baby rolls in the monitor’s blue fuzz
and I calculate how long until he needs to eat again
I’ve been going for months If I stop, I will be ordinary
All I want to do is feed myself bread and milk
I cut the baby out of the poem
I put the baby back in
The geese are migrating somewhere
One lags behind veering
unsatisfied by its pocket in the V
the group’s squawking mind to move
maybe hating those beating bodies ahead
I need the baby to take a nap I need the baby to not need me
I never meant to be so needed
I dream about drifting alone
I can’t quiet my ambition
It bats at my knees and I toss it scraps
hoping it will reward me for wrenching off each finger
each thick arm my teeming head
dropping them one by one into the black well of its jaws
I watch it twist and lean over the counter eating numb-eyed
The baby rolls in the monitor’s blue fuzz
and I calculate how long until he needs to eat again
I’ve been going for months If I stop, I will be ordinary
All I want to do is feed myself bread and milk
I cut the baby out of the poem
I put the baby back in
The geese are migrating somewhere
One lags behind veering
unsatisfied by its pocket in the V
the group’s squawking mind to move
maybe hating those beating bodies ahead
I need the baby to take a nap I need the baby to not need me
I never meant to be so needed
I dream about drifting alone
I can’t quiet my ambition
It bats at my knees and I toss it scraps
hoping it will reward me for wrenching off each finger
each thick arm my teeming head
dropping them one by one into the black well of its jaws
Emily Mohn-Slate's recent poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Her manuscript, The Falls, was a finalist for the 2016 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize offered by University of Pittsburgh Press. She teaches creative writing at Chatham University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
