After hearing about Mother Clifton yesterday, it felt really necessary to attempt another poem. I haven’t written one of my own, since last summer.

I didn’t want to write about her, but I did want to write for her, something reminiscent (but hopefully not entirely derivative) of her voice.

This is what I finished this morning:

when you heard about
the occupation of my egg,
you imagined miniature fascists
marching, steel-booted, across
my womb and wanted, instantly,
to liberate it:

were it my troop, trudging through,
he’d build a commune, rather than
staging a coup.

since it isn’t, you engage
in the most passive protest
possible, writing me wistfully
of the world before, as though
i’m capable of recalling
any night that ever preceded
the dustiness of this hidden alcove,
the thump and start of invasion,
the chemical hue of the clouds, after war.