This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from Teaching a Wild Thing by Kindra McDonald (Kelsay Books 2022).
Due
There was a spring baby boom
in the office where I worked.
Don’t drink the water, they joked
as all around me the pregnant women grew
each day and the cubicle walls
pressed in.
Shower after shower all pink
and blue so frosting sweet
and all the guesses and wives’ tales
carrying high and craving salt
daily updates like weather reports
the constant rotating due-date lotto.
I would shrink in my desk each morning
sick with worry, while all of them leaned
in and spun a sewing needle up and down
we are pink-cheeked giddy for girls
side to side, we toast and clap for boys.
Swelling month after month in secret.
At home I watch the squirrels steal
stuffing from my swing cushions
building nests in the tree. The thrush
is busy all morning swiping moss
and pine straw, my knotted hair
and strewn tissues make a home.
Butterflies rest fast on goldenrod
and aster, the ones with eyes
are God’s spies. The dragonflies
dance and dip, a devil’s darning needle
left to its own device will sew your mouth shut.
It’s my turn to make the weekly
cake and the egg I crack has two yolks
glossy eyes wobble and I wonder this time
how to divine this break, it is either twins
or death. One in every thousand hens
lay double eggs, one in every thousand
babies are born with teeth.
The mothers tell me my cakes are the sweetest.
Kindra McDonald is the author of the collections Teaching a Wild Thing, Fossils and In the Meat Years. She was the recipient of the 2020 Haunted Waters Press Poetry Award. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and is a poet-artist working and teaching in mixed-media and found poetry. She served as the Poetry Society of Virginia Southeastern region Vice President from 2019-2022. You can find her in the woods or at www.kindramcdonald.com.
Layla Lenhardt (she/they) is an American poet. She is founder and Editor-in-Chief of the (currently on hiatus) national literary journal 1932 Quarterly. Her essays, poems, short prose, and interviews have been published across various types of media, including a pickle jar, a post card, and a bathroom stall in Dublin. She is a 2021 Best of the Net Nominee and was a judge for Poetry Super Highway’s Annual Contest in 2022. Her first full-length poetry collection, Mother Tongue, was published by Main Street Rag Publications (2023). She is a 2022 alumna of the SAFTA residency. 
