Learning the Language of Hunger
Those mewling cries dug inside your dream
of cats yowling in the yard. The light
lifted the lids sealing your sleep.
At last, the sound grew fingers
that pulled you by the ears, shook you
to remember (How could you forget?)
this baby where you’d laid her for a nap
you took as yours. Motherhood so new
the call of hunger wafted out the window.
Your womb had opened like a reluctant
gate, pushing through a new life and you
to an earth of unfamiliar tongue.
Your breasts dripped a liquid not yet milk
enough. But how she latched on. Her suck
was strong, like she believed in you.
Your arms dull with slumber, you wondered
how you could learn this waking up,
how you would learn to be enough.
….
This poem is from the chapbook Naked Rib by Deborrah Corr (Finishing Line Press) and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/naked-rib-by-deborrah-corr/
In Naked Rib we begin in the Garden with Eve, the first female, and continue through the embodied experience of one woman’s life. The verses speak of a childhood deeply connected to the earth and explore a yearning to live creatively without restriction. The lines of the poems lead the reader through young adulthood, motherhood and the intensity of losing both a husband and a grown daughter to cancer. Learning to continue on with gratitude and a renewed sense of this earth’s beauty are the shores on which the final poems land.
Deborrah Corr is a poet living in Seattle. A former kindergarten teacher, she now devotes most of her days to the study and practice of the art and craft of poetry. She has worked with many teachers at Hugo House and online. Her work has appeared in the McNeese Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Sunlight Press, and several others. This is her debut chapbook.
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