Home Birth by Sarah Fox

She is born in the mountains

on a slate floor. We see her head

touch ground. Farm birds reiterate

the arrival of cowboys and their war.

On the road baskets of mango

behind baskets of laundry

in a line of Kek’chi women and children,

unloading their lives into luminous Sundays

of here! mountain, wedding

marimba and a bride arrested

for sorrow. For weeping.

Children become lost here.

All the ruins have been civilized,

weaving nuclear cancellation with

oil spill / commerce. Exiled at market,

smoky faces the light has taken

to traverse—still inflexible

in the way of soldiers who squat and dream:

musical horizons prepared by a fist.

That is the relative weight.

The bride in her Confirmation

white; deraptured.

Mangos, papayas, roosters: the mountain

remains in arrears of its battle.

Almost all the cocks wake up at once

and arrive ignited for industry,

give their form to geometry and spiral

the crosspiece of a fine blue similar.

Such sovereignty conserves everything,

obstinate and ordered to answer,

because one registers the mountain in a disturbance.

One examines the night for where one begins.

The rooster machinery interprets

an influence of emergency,

some tribal fixture fanned

and flown through the smog of a day.

We ditch the placenta in a bamboo hedge

camouflaged by parakeets. The next day’s

chipi-chipi parenthesizes the resultant orchid.

If panicked, arouse the supervisor of the shovel.

**

Home Birth with erasures by Paula Cisewski

1.

She is born.

We see her.

birds reiterate

the arrival.

2.

In the mountains

we see her head

reiterate

baskets

behind baskets of

luminous Sundays

for sorrow. For weeping.

Children become lost here.

the ruins           civilized,

weaving

Exiled

the light

bride

white; deraptured.

Because one registers the mountain in a disturbance.

The smog of a day.

The placenta

Camouflaged by parakeets.

The resultant orchid.

The supervisor of the shovel.

3.

A wedding

A cancellation

Soldiers squat and dream

Horizons prepared  

The rooster machinery

If panicked, arouse

4.

Of the shovel: the resultant orchid.

Of the resultant orchid: the next day’s ditch.

One begins in a disturbance. Ignited.

All the cocks wake up at once.

Of the battle: a mountain,

confirmation white.

The relative weight:

the way of soldiers.

Of all the ruins: a bride. Arrested

wedding of sorrow and marimba.

Of a day: a fixture.

Of a fixture: emergency.

Warring cowboys and farmbirds.

Yet luminous Sundays touch ground.

We see her head in the mountains.

She is born. 

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