The Sound of Sugar....Liz Kay

SUNDAY EVENING

          The twins were found dead Sunday night
          in their father’s home after police got a call
          around 8pm requesting they check on them.

We found him lying
on the bed—
not asleep, but neither
quite awake—his eyes fixed
on the wall behind us,
and below him, tucked
beneath the bed
were the two small
bodies, bundled together
in a large towel and placed
face down.
How long had they lain
there? And him
above them, covering
them with his body,
the way a man might
throw himself on a grenade
and wait
in that long still moment
for the world to erupt.

ABOUT THE POET :

Liz Kay's poems have appeared in such journals as Willow Springs, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, RHINO, and Sugar House Review. Alongside co-editor, Jen Lambert, Liz is a founding editor of Spark Wheel Press and the journal burntdistrict. Liz's debut novel, Monsters: A Love Story, is forthcoming from G. P. Putnam's Sons in 2016.

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. 

The Sound of Sugar....Liz Kay

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.