On Carrying a Baby to the Morgue

The body is warm from the womb.
It cools, essence evaporating
in blood tracing crevasses of skin,
the wet hair, the flaccid muscles.
Amniotic tides splash unnoticed
in the horror of absent cries-
no struggle against the squeezing pressure
of expelling muscles, no gasp
of breath grasping at life.

Futile resuscitation: a flurry
of massaging limbs, forcing breaths
into stilled lungs, pumping blood
through a stilled heart.
The silence of disbelief
and wails of loss
weave a background requiem.

Flesh chills. Cold limp limbs
are drawn up, folded into blankets,
mummy wrapped, to be carried
in halls echoing with concealment-
a furtive bundle labeled
with date, time, sex and mother's name.

Nightingale

When I was a nurse
and held life in my hand

there were no babies
crying in my living room at 3 a.m.,

yet I would rise stumbling in the dark,
white nightgown phosphorescent,

to search by feel for dripping IV's
and cardiac alarms, now gone silent

since I am no longer willing
to give my nights to search.

Cooking with B.I.

for Addie and Bill

I brown the meat; he follows,
counter to range and back, intent
on each movement of my hands-
stirring, grating cheese, slicing onions,
arranging taco shells.
It turns to fantasy: a cooking show,
southwestern, spicy… but is there room
on Saturday mornings for one more
among the Texan Italians, Julia Child,
vegetarians, Chinese, Chinese vegetarians?
Maybe a new tang:
I tell him he will be my hook-
The Cat in the Kitchen. Even better:
Cooking with B.I.
But the emotion of onions brings realization.
I would become maudlin, syrupy even,
rambling on about his name,
his life on the streets
before his rescue by my father,
his rapport with my daughter-
the many stories I bore friends with now.
I realize the TV producer,
regretfully of course, will
turn us down, no audience really
for a middle-aged woman
sharing mediocre recipes
over tears and cat crunchies.

^

Biography

Cathy Calkins lives in Alburquerque, New Mexico. She has had poems accepted for publication in Salt Hill, Agnieszka's Dowry and Electric Acorn and recently had poems accepted for publication in Weber Studies and The Hurricane Review.