J.C. Elkin
janecelkin@yahoo.com

Remember When


Dimpled shoulders smooth as dough
Eau de Johnson’s wispy curls 
Tiny voices, cosmic questions
Chubby hands that tugged my pearls

Not mine anymore 
They’re grown
Holding other hands
Out on their own

"Remember When" from Say It at Your Wedding



Keening for Eve
(to Alice)

Over one in a thousand every day succumb to maternal mortality,
women who labor too long, too hard, too poor to see it through.
Over half a million women a year, all colors, in every locality.

But none understand like the Africans, Asians, Afghanis the childbed fatality.
One in sixteen in the Sub-Sahara –five hundred times our due.
Over one in a thousand every day succumb to maternal mortality.

When Alice Roosevelt died giving birth, she was one percent her nationality,
back when laudanum, ether and booze were the only help women knew.
Still, half a million women a year, all colors, in every locality

are glad that caesarians, once even odds, have become almost a formality,
and forceps will soon be passé as whippings and midwives’ magic taboo.
Progress is one in a thousand a day succumbing to birth-bed mortality

if progress can ever describe modern deaths as acceptable third world reality.
Caesar, Robespierre, Frankenstein’s Shelley lost moms. Stonewall Jackson, too.
And half a million more this year will die in every locality.

Mumtaz Mahal (of the Taj) and Oliver Twist’s mum knew the finality
that touches each bloodline at some point in time. There must be more we can do.
Over one in a thousand every day succumb to maternal mortality.
Over half a million women a year, all colors, in every locality.

"Keening for Eve" from Empirical



Almost Fledglings
                                        

On a windy walk in May’s peach dawn, I soar like a gull in a gale until I happen on two baby birds blown from their nest to the road. Plump and prickly as ill-plucked fryers two weeks shy of grown, one is white as an angel, skim milk shades drawn over eyes. The other, purpling, 
inflates – deflates, an avian respirator. 

Knowing these morsels are served up for cats, I walk on, helpless and haunted, knowing I’ll write of their plight. A nagging voice says, Take their picture. That’s what an artist would do. But should I dwell that close to death, I’d never soar again.

"Almost Fledglings" from Soul-Lit



​Alaskan Fly Agaric Mushroom

​
Firm and ripe it perches
on a fleshy stalk –
spherical red cap,
tasty squirrel snack,
tempting Eden fruit
dusted in pure flakes
of sweet arsenic.

Natives, it is said,
fed it to reindeer,
harvested the urine,
drank the potion down,
felt their spirits rise,
found enlightenment.