The Carrying. Ada Limón
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spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
THE VULTURE & THE BODY
On my way to the fertility clinic,
I pass five dead animals.
First a raccoon with all four paws to the sky
like he’s going to catch whatever bullshit load
falls on him next.
Then, a grown coyote, his golden furred body soft against the white
cement lip of the traffic barrier. Trickster no longer,
an eye closed to what’s coming.
Close to the water tower that says “Florence, Y’all,” which means
I’m near Cincinnati, but still in the bluegrass state,
and close to my exit, I see
three dead deer, all staggered but together, and I realize as I speed
past in my death machine that they are a family. I say something
to myself that’s between a prayer and a curse—how dare we live
on this earth.
I want to tell my doctor about how we all hold a duality
in our minds: futures entirely different, footloose or forged.
I want to tell him how lately, it’s enough to be reminded that my
body is not just my body, but that I’m made of old stars and so’s he,
and that last Tuesday,
I sat alone in the car by the post office and just was
for a whole hour, no one knowing how to find me, until
I got out, the sound of the car door shutting like a gun,
and mailed letters, all of them saying, Thank you.
But in the clinic, the sonogram wand showing my follicles, he asks
if I have any questions, and says, Things are getting exciting.
I want to say, But what about all the dead animals?
But he goes quicksilver, and I’m left to pull my panties up like a big girl.
Some days there is a violent sister inside of me, and a red ladder
that wants to go elsewhere.
I drive home on the other side of the road, going south now.
The white coat has said I’m ready, and I watch as a vulture
crosses over me, heading toward
the carcasses I haven’t properly mourned or even forgiven.
What if, instead of carrying
a child, I am supposed to carry grief?
The great black scavenger flies parallel now, each of us speeding,
intently and driven, toward what we’ve been taught to do with death.
AMERICAN PHAROAH
Despite the morning’s gray static of rain,
we drive to Churchill Downs at 6 a.m.,
eyes still swollen shut with sleep. I say,
Remember when I used to think everything
was getting better and better? Now I think
it’s just getting worse and worse. I know it’s not
what I’m supposed to say as we machine our
way through the silent seventy minutes on 64
over potholes still oozing from the winter’s
wreckage. I’m tired. I’ve had vertigo for five
months and on my first day home, he’s shaken
me awake to see this horse not even race, but
work. He gives me his jacket as we face
the deluge from car to the Twin Spire turnstiles,
and once deep in the fern-green grandstands I see
the crowd. A few hundred maybe, black umbrellas,
cameras, and notepads, wet-winged eager early birds
come to see this Kentucky-bred bay colt with his
chewed-off tail train to end the almost forty-year
American Triple Crown drought. A man next to us,
some horse racing bigwig, hisses a list of reasons
why this horse—his speed-heavy pedigree, muscle
and bone recovery, etcetera etcetera could never
win the grueling mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes.
Then the horse comes out, first just casually trotting
with his lead horse, and all at once, a brief break
in the storm, and he’s racing against no one
but himself and the official clockers, monstrously
fast and head down so we can see that faded star
flash on his forehead like this is real gladness.
As the horse eases up and all of us close our mouths
to swallow, the big-talking guy next to us folds his arms,
says what I want to say too: I take it all back.
DANDELION INSOMNIA
The big-ass bees are back, tipsy, sun drunk
and heavy with thick knitted leg warmers
of pollen. I was up all night again so today’s
yellow hours seem strange and hallucinogenic.
The neighborhood is lousy with mowers, crazy
dogs, and people mending what winter ruined.
What I can’t get over is something simple, easy:
How could a dandelion seed head seemingly
grow overnight? A neighbor mows the lawn
and bam, the next morning, there’s a hundred
dandelion seed heads straight as arrows
and proud as cats high above any green blade
of manicured grass. It must bug some folks,
a flower so tricky it can reproduce asexually,
making perfect identical selves, bam, another me,
bam, another me. I can’t help it—I root
for that persecuted rosette so hyper in its
own making it seems to devour the land.
Even its name, translated from