Twilight Baby

by Tamara J. Madison

for MariOla (“Mama”) who gave us everything she had…

Note: Twilight sleep was an amnesic state commonly induced during the early twentieth century by the injection of certain drugs to provide pain relief during and also erase the memory of childbirth. 

Your breath rushes.
Your voice breaks the air.
Your body, my chamber, shifts awkwardly.
Hands not my father’s or my familiars’
press against you, shove me
from one wall to the other.
Strange hands fumble inside you
as I quickly shrink away with
nowhere to go.

I hear many voices, 
not the voice of my father or my familiars.
They prompt, urge as the pressure builds.
Your heart drum quickens and rivets
the streams inside the earth of your body.
Your breath is now whipping wind.
In stillness I surrender 
as strange voices
hasten and your body contracts.

Your heart now pounds like footsteps chased by fire.
Your panting resounds in this chamber.
You grunt I hear the cracking as your hips break open.
You gasp, your breath quiets, your heart slows.
The silence between beats frightens me.
Unfamiliar hands knead your flesh,
roll my bones to surrender.

Help me, Mama!

You do not move.
Gloved hands slip through the gates,
invade your stilled body, my chamber.
Gloved hands pull without your push, pull me 
away from your heart, my companion drum,
away from the veins of your earth,
away from this wet-warm darkness, 
my home.

Gloved hands guide me to blinding brightness.
I blink, catch a smile slither across the sands of his face.
Gloved hands bind my feet, flip me.
I dangle, choke on cold air.               
Gloved hands slap; the jolt stings; I scream.

What becomes of a daughter
borned, never birthed,
as her mother sleeps?

Moving Towards Quietude

by Gerburg Garmann

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Poet, writer, and editor, Tamara J. Madison, is the author of Threed, This Road Not Damascus (Trio House Press), Kentucky Curdled and Sistuh’s Sermon on the Mount (all poetry), and Collard County (fiction). Her writing is inspired by her ancestry and relations. She is the creator of BREAKDOWN: The Poet & The Poems, a YouTube conversation series promoting poets and their poetry as inspiration for everyday life. Tamara has also shared her poetry on the TEDx platform. She is an MFA graduate of New England College and an Anaphora Arts Fellow (2021). She currently teaches English and creative writing in central Florida and is working on a new full-length poetry collection, multimedia presentation, and workshop inspired by research from her family’s archives.

Gerburg Garmann, a painter, poet, and recently retired professor of global languages and cross-cultural studies at the University of Indianapolis, is now fully concentrating on the arts. Her scholarly publications appear in English, German, and French in international journals. Her artwork and poems have appeared in various magazines and anthologies around the world. She specializes in creating art for women.