This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Accidental Garden by Catherine Esposito Prescott (Gunpowder Press 2023).
Birth
The chant pulls rivers down
my face. I say MA, I sing mother.
I am that; I am not that.
Time escapes. Photographs
turn in a flip book, fanning memory:
What happened to the baby?
His man hands reach for mine,
fingers once no larger than a rosemary needle.
This plant of mine/not mine
calls to me in the deepest voice,
voice of river rocks. I am
soul struck. When did he arrive?
Did I hold open the door?
No, I was the door.
I was the door.
Catherine Esposito Prescott is the author of Accidental Garden, winner of The Barry Spacks Poetry Prize (Gunpowder Press, 2023), and two chapbooks. She is the co-founder of SWWIM and editor-in-chief of SWWIM Every Day. Some of her recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Colorado Review, Josephine Quarterly, NELLE, and Poets Reading the News. In addition to her work in poetry, Prescott teaches yoga philosophy and leads yoga and writing retreats.
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