A Brief Hello
Fruitless labor
Pitocin-dosed
forced contractions
Tears doubled
by knowing
what’s to come
The final push
The heartbreaking
silence
She holds the baby
who will never
suckle at her breast
Tiny boy, gone
before he arrived
An empty promise
Yet, she holds him
Swaddles him
Kisses him
Strokes him
Adores him
Names him
One photo
Mom and Gabriel
Her little angel
Goodbye
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Well, after the fun with Shakespeare yesterday, I fell into memories of my mom and her telling me about “the one that got away.” Times have changed since then: Even though my mother’s baby was about six months old, she never saw her second girl child. Susan at Imaginary Garden With Read Toads, where I’ve been posting daily since the first of April, asked for a Hello or Hello/Goodbye poem, so this allowed me to put my emotions into words. This will also appear at my poetic birthing center, Poets United.
Nowadays, they take a picture, they do name the baby, they have a funeral, a burial or internment. I think it’s a healthy part of the grieving process that will come no matter what, for the mother with swollen breasts and no baby to feed. I wish my mother could have met her baby girl. May all babies be born healthy – and wanted. Peace, Amy
Jiminy Was Right
She sits up
sweat drenched, crying
Doesn’t mind pix with smeared makeup
After a miscarriage and abortion
she didn’t think a baby could emerge
Her first child suckles
Proof that dreams come true
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Trifecta asked for exactly 33 words about a “dream come true.”
Many women experience misfortunes when it comes to timing pregnancy, carrying a baby, and actually coming to full term. I’ve held the hands of friends who were going to terminate a pregnancy – even paid for one, whose boyfriend was beating her. I’ve said “I’m sorry” and cradled sobbing girlfriends in my arms like she was my own child. The miracle of childbirth is a dream come true – a dream deferred for some. For others, they “drop ‘em like tadpoles,” lucky women!
The song, “A Child Is Born,” was written by jazz legend Thad Jones, with lyrics by Alec Wilder. Peace, Amy
Lucky Girl Child
Our second sister,
birthed still as stone
Never to serve as
our father’s very own
little plaything – then relive,
after years of self-doubt,
what evils her Daddy
had carried about
I think it lucky
she heard God’s sweet call
Was she not graced
by good fate after all?
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
As always, I speak on behalf of myself, not for anyone in my family. This is my truth, and I tell it willingly to help others.
As frequent readers here at Sharp Li’l know, I was sexually molested by my father. Long before I was born, my mother suffered a stillbirth during her second pregnancy. Fortunately for Charlotte, subsequent pregnancies went well; however, there were consequences regarding my father – which she finally acknowledged knowing about, during the last year of her life.
Sexual molestation is more frequent in families that most would acknowledge. Fathers, uncles, teachers, and friends of the family, of whom over 90% identify as straight men, are the most frequent perpetrators of pedophilia. If you know a little girl or boy who is easily startled, wets the bed past the usual age, seems unusually shy (or gravitates toward adult figures with inappropriate affection), or even tries to tell you about “bad touches,” please take notice. It may be nothing… or it may be everything for that child to be noticed and taken seriously.
For more information on the signs of child sexual abuse, click HERE.
This was written in response to the weekly Trifecta prompt, Lucky, with 33-333 words, including the third definition below.
LUCKY (adjective)
1: having good luck
2: happening by chance : fortuitous
3: producing or resulting in good by chance: favorable>
May the children near you, and all children worldwide, be freed of this tragic circumstance. Until then, I bid you peace. Amy
Life Cycling
First come the three little words
Then, “I’ll love you ‘til I die”
Vows to share a lifetime as one
Down the aisle into Real Street
Change begins to take hold
She feels faint over nothing
After a march to the drug store, she
Places calls to her doctor and OB
Family planning worked, a baby is on the way
To create life within is a special calling
She doesn’t mind the stringy stretch marks
Nor the RR train to La Maze classes
in order to master the art of patience and breath
while bringing new life into the light
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
I remember being pregnant with Riley. Ask women who’s ever been pregnant, and they’ll probably say they felt like the most powerful person in the world. Submerged, cradled within, this growing child… I am getting misty because my girlfriend and bandmate Karen’s daughter Amanda is in hospital just now, dilating and all that good stuff.
Riley is the best thing I ever did. Not just giving birth, but raising her, watching her tap out complicated drumbeats from the age of four; seeing her first pictures – and for years to come, finding manga characters scribbled on the margins of homework. Startlingly smart, easy to be with, and wicked talented… she’s a force to be reckoned with, and, as you can see by this photo shoot (body painting, not tattoos), she’s gorgeous. Love you, Riles. Mom
For the Sunday Whirl, the wordle can be found HERE. Check out the other poets as well! Peace and soda crackers for the first trimester (!), Amy
THE JOURNEY
Wriggled, writhed headfirst
down a one-way tunnel
Saw a pinpoint of light
Of hope
Squeezed, squished
through the door
into the light
Boogermeister suction
But finally
bundled, bawling
Soothed by mama’s waiting breast
© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
Trifecta wanted exactly 33 words about “new beginnings.” Can’t think of one better for my daughter, nor for myself. The journey continues – she in California, artist on fire; me in the chill of Wisconsin, warmth all in my heart.
We always called the blue suction bulb the “Boogermeister.” A family thing, like “melty and weird” and “migdo pigdo.” Ah, yes, my family keeps me sane! Peace, Amy
Labor Room Blues (in the key of AARGH!)
Would that my trap door’d been
strung with elastic
My labor would have been
oh, so easy – less drastic
If I am blessed with one
more babe, I’m sure I’ll
scream, “Cancel the Gatorade!
Let’s try epidural!”
© 2012 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Three Word Wednesday: Labor, Cancel, Elastic
Also at Poets United, prompt: Strings
And Riley, no hard feelings! But if you think you’re getting a baby sister or brother at my age, think again, ha ha.
TWOFER! Because yesterday’s poem was such an unbelievable bummer (for me, too), I have two nice ones today. First, I’m flexing some haiku muscle for Sensational Haiku Wednesday; second, Three Word Wednesday gave us: Adapt, Glide, and Lie. These are also posted at my poetry haven, Poets United. Peace to all, Amy
FOR SENSATIONAL HAIKU WEDNESDAY
Falling Leaves (Haiku)
Leaves color, then drop
as though staying green so long
has left them weary.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
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FOR THREE WORD WEDNESDAY (prompt words in bold)
Heaven Sent
Pregnant teen Kit, big-time cocaine-addicted.
She knew that the baby’d be wholly afflicted
She tried to clean up; she didn’t abort;
but habits and lies and recovery fell short.
She put down her pipe just in time for E.R.
A stranger took pity, drove her there in his car.
He cell-phoned his wife, who rushed down for the birth
(To have their own, they’d have moved heaven and earth.)
Kit wouldn’t nurse baby, pleaded, “Don’t wanna see him.”
The couple, still there, never once thought to flee him.
A tough road ahead for a tough little guy:
a whole lot of tears, in purging the high.
A nurse saw the two, screaming babe in her arms;
“Maybe-Mom” glided over, her touch was the charm.
One look and they knew, so completely enrapt,
that they would not only adopt, but adapt.
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
The Big Change
How to explain the changes ahead of me.
First, Mom needed gin, just a snort
to abort the mortification of
the dreaded subject at hand: Sex.
On a page in her steno notebook,
she drew crude diagrams:
Ovaries, tubes, uterus – utilitarian scrawls,
later to be thrown away in disgust.
“The egg starts in here,” pen on ovary,
“travels down through here,”
tracing Fallopian Lane,
“and ends up here. Once a month.”
Another jigger of gin for courage.
“If the egg gets fertilized, it stays here
and becomes a baby. If not,”
siiiiiiigh, “you bleed and need some equipment.”
She pulled out the mysterious
blue box, used heretofore only by
Mom and my big sisters. Removing
napkin and belt, she trussed me up.
That was the extent of Sex Ed with Mom:
There were eggs (aren’t eggs big?).
There were tubes and a place
you might make a baby (is fertilization about peat moss?)
Later I found out the good stuff…
recalling Mae West’s immortal wisdom:
“No man ever loved me
the way I love myself!”
© 2011 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil
For Poetic Bloomings, a new site – check it out! Theirbeing Change. Also at Poets United, the poetry collective.
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