Kate Delany
To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to
Become Visible
(title taken from 19th century poet Anna Barbauld)
hard to imagine you as human down there:
secret face submerged beneath a wall of flesh.
I guess it’s true
you look like the chubby silhouette,
reproduced in every imaginationless maternity magazine
sweetly sucking its thumb, balled up neat as tube socks
but I prefer to think of you as a skate,
a pancake of cartilage, looping the dark
standing waters of me, chasing sparks
of light & noise, skulking sustenance,
not just treading water, taking deep pulls
on the placenta like some lazy scuba diver—
or else I think of you as a bird, tiny, white
as lace, beating hard against the boarded skylight
of my stomach, cut off from your usual trajectory,
like the thrush your father & I saw
trapped in a café on Rue St. Catherine,
fluttering hysterical at the window
after a moment’s mistake in the rain
maybe it survived on muffin crumbs and cream
but for how long? it needed air, like you,
who I imagine when the day comes,
and I unhinge the cage door of my legs
will shot wild and free as a bird
Kate Delany's previous publication credits include a book of poetry, Reading Darwin, which
was published by Poets Corner Press as their Honorable Mention winner. Her poetry has
appeared in such journals as Barrelhouse, Jabberwock Review, Lilith, 13th Moon, and Spire
Press. Her fiction has appeared in magazines such as Antithesis Common, Art Times, Long
Story Short, and is forthcoming in Sotto Voce. She teaches in the English department at
Rowan University and lives outside Philly with her husband Seth, daughter Samara, and cats
Esmeralda and Emile Zola.
Home
Issue Two
To a Little Invisible Being Who Is Expected Soon to
Become Visible
(title taken from 19th century poet Anna Barbauld)
hard to imagine you as human down there:
secret face submerged beneath a wall of flesh.
I guess it’s true
you look like the chubby silhouette,
reproduced in every imaginationless maternity magazine
sweetly sucking its thumb, balled up neat as tube socks
but I prefer to think of you as a skate,
a pancake of cartilage, looping the dark
standing waters of me, chasing sparks
of light & noise, skulking sustenance,
not just treading water, taking deep pulls
on the placenta like some lazy scuba diver—
or else I think of you as a bird, tiny, white
as lace, beating hard against the boarded skylight
of my stomach, cut off from your usual trajectory,
like the thrush your father & I saw
trapped in a café on Rue St. Catherine,
fluttering hysterical at the window
after a moment’s mistake in the rain
maybe it survived on muffin crumbs and cream
but for how long? it needed air, like you,
who I imagine when the day comes,
and I unhinge the cage door of my legs
will shot wild and free as a bird
Kate Delany's previous publication credits include a book of poetry, Reading Darwin, which
was published by Poets Corner Press as their Honorable Mention winner. Her poetry has
appeared in such journals as Barrelhouse, Jabberwock Review, Lilith, 13th Moon, and Spire
Press. Her fiction has appeared in magazines such as Antithesis Common, Art Times, Long
Story Short, and is forthcoming in Sotto Voce. She teaches in the English department at
Rowan University and lives outside Philly with her husband Seth, daughter Samara, and cats
Esmeralda and Emile Zola.
Home
Issue Two
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Chickenpinata
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