7.09 / Parenting Issue

A Whole Mother Story

Katie Manning

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Manning.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″]

This poem is also available as a PDF to preserve the poet’s original intent.

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Once [1] upon [2] a [3] time [4], there [6] was [7] a[8] mother[9]

1 Once: An understatement, a lie. Best to start false and work your way around.

2 upon: Taken abstractly. Not the same as standing upon on a table or traveling upon a road, but much lower, more stationary.

3 a: Another misleading substitute for one. Never simply follow the first.

4 time: Which runs in circles like a clock no matter how the squares on calendars try to contain it.

5 comma: Breathe. Keep breathing. Good.

6 there: Seems so far away, but always holds here as well.

7 was: Everything used to exist. Some things might exist still.

8 a: No longer just one. Open your mouth wide.

9 mother: More than her. Flying creature, tasty other, ill-defined

Katie Manning just completed her PhD in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her writing has been published in Fiction Southeast, New Letters, and Poet Lore, among other journals and anthologies, and she recently received The Nassau Review Author Award for Poetry.