Two Days after Eden
I woke with the ‘rage of all women’ condensed in my throat.
Too newborn and without eyesight, I could not see the many like me,
rallying to our collective age. Lumber in a hundred-
year-old house as it settles into itself. Hauntingly and at night.
Something mammalian clawed its way
to the surface. Every camera-eyeful conspired to keep
all the bitches down in their holes. So, when we finally spoke,
two days after Eden had burned, in place of apology, we proclaimed:
It’s bitches all the way down.
From Inside the Maternity Den
No other task will occupy the mind or body.
The sun produced by just a thought of you
will collapse the ice cave around her,
crushing her flat to hug the broken earth.
When she should have been headed
for the openness of the ocean, she was denning
deep in the permafrost. For reasons unclear,
we occasionally destroy our offspring, run
them into the snowdrifts or abandon them
at feeding time. Wake and leave the chamber.
She will gradually starve to death or she will
suffocate or she will live for years with arctic
mites and only her raw materials. As long
as there is still the chance of your extinction.
I Said to the Den Mother
Look: I am nothing.
Offended, she told me I am light.
Or the possibility of light
just before dawn. Then, the prism of color
filling the dew globes on the Garden
Spider’s web. She told me I am huntress.
Born prey on the floodplain, turned
opportunistic feeder.
Because I find
what’s mine.
About Melinda Wilson
Melinda Wilson is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Manhattan College and author of AMPLEXUS, a chapbook from Dancing Girl Press. Other poems have appeared in publications such as The Cincinnati Review, The Wisconsin Review, The Minnesota Review, Verse Daily, Valley Voices and elsewhere. She lives in New York City.