Topless at the office
like a scandal,
I stand otherwise constructed:
trousers, polished black shoes,
hair a neat crop, the reds
of my face muted by beige smear.
My affair here is with
a machine. I'll soon hook up with
plastic trumpets, turn on
my motor, get milked
for a baby forty minutes away.
But it's this bare moment before
that stuns me, dangling bra-less
like half of me is made
for spring break gone primal,
the other half
will write a memo.
Is this what it means
to be a mother? The self
split in two, like the body in labor?
Or is this just the tear
in humanity, even as we
shoulder-pad our denial:
always tugging us back
to the garden, to the beginning,
which wears the same
clothing as the end?
Pumping Milk by Heather Lanier |Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser
$15.00Price
