#6 – Three Poems (#2) – April Ranger

 
As we approach our 3rd anniversary on February 6th, we are counting down the top-ten most-read posts from the last year.
 
 
Not A Mother

for Purvi Patel, sentenced to 20 years prison in Indiana for feticide and child neglect after miscarrying a fetus, April 2015

How you bled & bled
till you nearly died,
but how you wanted to live:
trusted those bald hospital walls,
gloved hands, sheets clean
as preacher’s speech.
Wrists cuffed, knees spread,
body splayed, courtroom bench
your emergency room bed – the bed
you made, they’ll say.

And how I have praised
my own sudden blood:
my red verdict spelled plain
in the folds of my underwear:
my private sentence, a free woman’s walk
to the drugstore. How I swallowed pills
before and after. How I’ve danced.
How I danced till I sweat
when my blood arrived
one month after
he carried me home,
refused the condom

Three Poems (#2) – April Ranger

 
 
Not A Mother

for Purvi Patel, sentenced to 20 years prison in Indiana for feticide and child neglect after miscarrying a fetus, April 2015

How you bled & bled
till you nearly died,
but how you wanted to live:
trusted those bald hospital walls,
gloved hands, sheets clean
as preacher’s speech.
Wrists cuffed, knees spread,
body splayed, courtroom bench
your emergency room bed – the bed
you made, they’ll say.

And how I have praised
my own sudden blood:
my red verdict spelled plain
in the folds of my underwear:
my private sentence, a free woman’s walk
to the drugstore. How I swallowed pills
before and after. How I’ve danced.
How I danced till I sweat
when my blood arrived
one month after
he carried me home,
refused the condom

Two Poems – April Ranger

Self-Portrait as an Outlet, Or, Woman Too Much
		After Jeffrey McDaniel


You might look at me 
and see a kind 

of human face, two eyes above 
a round, shocked mouth.

I tell you, I am all mouths.

They come, they stick things
in me. They come, they search.

I am so needed, for one
use. Lord, that I had a tongue, 

three tongues for all this crowded
howling speech.
 

				

Three Poems – April Ranger

What The Poet/Waitress Works For

Money, I know, is an ugly word
to put in poems, can’t we keep commerce 
out of anything? The answer is no,
not even love. In love, you paid
for a new strong wheel when my bike 
was robbed and I was broke.  In love, 
I cried the first time we shopped for groceries
together, all those fresh organic herbs,
nine-dollar handmade beeswax candles. In love
you listened every time I told you
I cannot afford. In love, you paid 
for our escape to Montreal, city 
of turquoise shutters and bright cafes. 
In love, I asked how did you not know 
green peppers are the cheapest?