by Pam Davenport
Headline says dirty
though I don’t see dirty,
I see baby,
I see lines in Celeste’s brow
between her dark eyes above shadows––
for she is a mother.
Baby is dark and pure,
latched fast onto a policewoman’s
creamy bursting breast.
Hungry and malnourished,
we grasp this picture.
We lie in filth,
cockroaches burrow into our ears,
rats gnaw our limp arms,
none of our mothers want this.
A TV station displays the wrong
soul singer, may think all babies
are the same if unclean.
All babies are the same.
All babies are exactly different.
It is hard to latch onto anything,
so much we cannot grasp,
yet this baby knows what to do.
Celeste knows what to do.
Pam Davenport dreams of being a cowboy. Or cowgirl. Luckily, she lives in Arizona. Sadly, she is too old. Her poems have been published in Nimrod, Tinderbox, Poetry of the American Southwest, Chiron, Snapdragon, Rougarou, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Four Chambers and Bared: An Anthology of Bras and Breasts.
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| Celeste Ayala: “Police officer who breastfed “smelly and dirty” malnourished baby is PROMOTED for incredible gesture” —The Mirror (UK) 23 August 2018 |
Headline says dirty
though I don’t see dirty,
I see baby,
I see lines in Celeste’s brow
between her dark eyes above shadows––
for she is a mother.
Baby is dark and pure,
latched fast onto a policewoman’s
creamy bursting breast.
Hungry and malnourished,
we grasp this picture.
We lie in filth,
cockroaches burrow into our ears,
rats gnaw our limp arms,
none of our mothers want this.
A TV station displays the wrong
soul singer, may think all babies
are the same if unclean.
All babies are the same.
All babies are exactly different.
It is hard to latch onto anything,
so much we cannot grasp,
yet this baby knows what to do.
Celeste knows what to do.
Pam Davenport dreams of being a cowboy. Or cowgirl. Luckily, she lives in Arizona. Sadly, she is too old. Her poems have been published in Nimrod, Tinderbox, Poetry of the American Southwest, Chiron, Snapdragon, Rougarou, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Four Chambers and Bared: An Anthology of Bras and Breasts.
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