STOP
No we’re not playing baby any more
Get up
You can walk
Use big girl words
Sit down or you’re not getting dessert
You have a napkin right there
Why are you wiping your mouth with your sleeve
Why are you doing that
Please let me eat
I need my arm
You’re hanging on it
Stop kicking her
You’re not going to bite your sister
We don’t hit
I don’t know why I plan things for you to do with your friends when you act like this
If you want to hear the song stop talking
Leave her alone
Just close your mouth and be quiet
I’ll tell you when to come out
I’m not ready to see you
We’re going to turn that off in a minute
You have five more minutes
No there are no more minutes it’s time to go
Come on I’m leaving
Just a minute
Get your hands off me
I don’t like the hitting hands
Use your words
No I can’t
You know how to put them on yourself
It makes my back hurt
Because I’m mean
HER FIRST YEAR
In the early months,
it is suckle and sleep,
suckle and sleep.
We tickle her feet
to keep her awake,
to be sure she has enough.
At the half-year mark,
it is suckle and play.
She bobs on,
and off.
So newly aware
of her world
she must nurse
in the dark,
on an island only
we can rock to.
Thank God her teeth
come late.
I hold her tight
to fight the pain
when she hooks
them in, my blood
on her lips.
At one year,
a final binge
like she knows
it will end.
She’ll be okay,
my husband pats her back.
But it’s me
I worry about.
It’s my breasts,
how they lump
and leak
and throb.
And see how
she plays
and laughs
and asks
for her cup
when I need her
to remember
my body
in hers. Please,
tell me
she will remember
the days,
the hours,
the minutes
I was enough.
MY FERTILITY DOCTOR, SHE IS A GENTLE GOD
who gives out babies
except one day
she has a resident-in-training
will it be okay
if he examines you
and too quick the KY-jelly coated stick
is in and he whips it around like he’s digging
a hole
don’t forget there’s a person
on the other side of that
don’t
forget
he slows and the screen lights up
she counts eggs
she writes how many
and on which side
he yanks the stick out
before I can say
stop
I want a baby
the normal way
I AM JUST BEGINNING TO SWEAR OFF RESTAURANTS WITH INDOOR PLAYGROUNDS
when a woman turns in her booth
she says
we lost a son
he battled cancer twelve years
they just kept finding it
but you do the best you can
day by day
you enjoy them.
...
Tina Parker lives and writes in Berea, Kentucky. Her poems have been published in Appalachian Heritage, Still: The Journal, Rattle, and PMS: poemmemoirstory. Learn more about her life and work at www.tina-parker.com.