Midwife—The Witch Dabbles in
Healing
The boy came on a summer morn,
shouldered
his bloody way out while the woman
groaned like a cow.
He nearly fell into my hands,
sticky, still warm
from the womb. I pressed him to his
mother’s breast
to shush his cries. All the while,
the blood swelled
out of her, as from an animal cut
clean. Her hand
at the child’s head grew languid
and dropped
to the bed, and the infant lost his
grip, slipped
into her limp arm, squalling at the
nipple beyond.
I brewed a tea heavy with ergot and
oak bark, spooned
it through her lips, but still she
bled. I knew some piece
of the caul must have stuck fast
inside her.
I scraped it free with my fingers,
massaged
her belly till I felt it start to
tighten, fed her what I could
of the afterbirth until she roused
enough to spit it out.
Awake finally, she wept over the
child, put him back
on her breast. I gave her stew made
of lamb
and when they had both eaten and
she slept, I took
the boy from her arms and breathed
him in, memorized
his scent. Hansel, she
mumbled from her dream. I turned
my back to her and licked him clean.
About the Poet:
A founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and the journal
burntdistrict, Liz
Kay holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska, where she was the recipient
of both an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Wendy Fort Foundation Prize
for exemplary work in poetry. In 2008, she was awarded a Dorothy Sargent
Rosenberg Prize for excellence in lyric poetry. Her poems have appeared in such
journals as Beloit Poetry Journal, RHINO, Nimrod, Willow Springs, The
New York Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Redactions, and Sugar
House Review.
About the Sound of Sugar:
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.
We’ve loved reading the work that we’ve published (clearly), so now we want an opportunity to better hear our contributors. We will feature an audio recording of a poem from one of our seven issues, read by the poet and updated every couple of weeks. This an open invitation to all contributors from any of our issues, we were delighted to print your work, now we’re eager to hear it.
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