Getting Used to the Body

My child was born the month before Stages of Twilight appeared. Soon after, Rusty North of Sagittarius Press in Port Townsend asked me for poems. On her small letter press she has produced many, small, exquisite, books. I gave her the short pieces I had written in the first startling moments of motherhood before my daughter was two weeks old. Already my child had changed my life.

Availability

out of print

Excerpt from Getting Used to the Body

“Headtrips”

On its tender stalk
your head weaves and wobbles.
If it were still in its waters,
we could say “floats.”

No way to enter
except through the body.
Over and over you must hold
yourself upright.

Head steady,
mouth in a single expression
for more than a second,
both eyes focused in the same place—

you want to pass for human.