Cry, cry.

Jonnie Comet


Can you hear the mother cry;
Cry, cry, mother;
Baby on her back doth lie
With some man or another.
Baby take what mother give,
Calling it initiative;
‘Mamá, this is how I live;
‘Bye-bye, Mother.’

 

A sixmonth: sixteen; what’s amiss?
’Fore the mirror weeping;
No swimsuit will flatter this;
Nature’s way is keeping.
Rush from school to clinic free:
‘R-U-4-8-6 for me!’
Doctor says, ‘Too late, you see:
‘Midnight, come a-creeping.’

Oh! –all agony, no pride,
Heels in stirrups snaring;
Motherhood thus nullified
With medical paring.
Fair trade? –for but three weeks’ pain
To avoid the peers’ disdain,
And to wear swimsuits again
With the boys all staring?

 

Can you hear the baby coo?
Cry, cry, mother;
No; that joy’s denied, for you
Cast away that bother.
Now all babies’ bliss a knell
Not of heav’n, but closer Hell;
In your Purgatory dwell:
Fie, fie, ‘Mother’!

- 2002

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l. 14 - RU-486 - in former days, a ‘morning-after’ contraceptive pill whose role as an inducer of abortion has been debated. The narrator’s request for it at this point shows her lack of sense about the issue