7.09 / Parenting Issue

When I first approached Roxane about editing a parenting issue of PANK, we were both a tad unsure of just how it would shake out.  Sure, many of us are writers and parents, but most of us -whether out of necessity or sanity- try our damndest to keep those two worlds separate.

You know how sometimes you’re in your twenties in America and you’ve learned every lesson you’re ever going to learn about ten times already, and you start to realize that’s what learning is, not answering questions, but finding ways to ask the same questions over and over again? You’re twenty-one or twenty-nine and your heart’s

[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. —- 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.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Finch.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Threads trail from the stuffed elephant’s face, and a bit of cotton peeks from the fresh wound. I pry a button-eye out of my son’s two-year old fist. He is unwilling to give up, and he surprises me with his strength.

Today is my husband’s birthday and a man stands at the top of the world, worshipping the sky and Middle Eastern sun as it sets over the longest day of the year. Yossi said that he knew the guy would dive and went to bed.

After moving into half double domestic step- life, a dispatch from the nearest shore of my recent bachelor past bobbed like a bottled message: A chinese menu tri-folded into the door like a throwing star. The wide-eyed seven-year-old blonde buzz-saw found it first–like sunken treasure or my stash of wintergreen Tic-Tac’s.

The bed is a cloud, and I am afraid to step off into the cold otherworld, to take her with me into the vaporous after. I nestle in backwards, pose fetal and pull her into the cocoon of comforter, to the bulge of hot breast, back to the body. I rest and bide and tend.

Chloey was flying my model airplanes again.  But that’s okay.  They’re Styrofoam.  When the wings fall off, or the nose pancakes, you use extra glue.  We stood at the top of the hill.  In front of us, a downward slope of dirt and grass gave the airplanes more room to crash.  I threw:  she crashed.

A is for ABC This is the alphabet puzzle your grandmother gave me when I was a boy. I do not remember when I got it; it was always mine. This alphabet puzzle has never belonged to anyone else, until this moment, which you will not remember.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Mermaids.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Mel and her friend Kaylie are sunning away their innocence, their legs lined up and waiting behind them. Mel reaches back and adjusts the bottom of her American flag one-piece, which, we discovered this morning, is too small.

If you are the parent of a queer child, you will not be punished for casting them out. No one will arrest you for the exorcisms or threats; no one will fault your shame. If you have a god, you may have to wrestle him for peace. You might win.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Kim.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] 9:00. First, try not to be late for preschool kiss & play drop-off. Even one minute late, you might have to parallel park your minivan, and you’re not so good at that.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Johnstone.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] We have a cohort of children-one for every reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh, an entire baseball team of kids.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Joshi.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] 1. I love her the most when I am drinking my morning coffee at work. She is at school. School is over five kilometres away. There are no grubby hands hanging on to the hem of my dress.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Gelatt.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] I am not supposed to say “Make me a sammich, bitch!” Not even in jest. Not supposed to say “Baby got Bounce.” Mothers are not supposed to flash peace signs break into spontaneous Douggie or use the interrogative “Dude?” the statement “Dude. Seriously.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_9/Chelko.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] I feel the eel of her skim the undersurface of my skin. It’s alive. Now, I imagine everyone I meet emerging, rumpled and wet, betwixt legs. The birthing room dank with the breath between screams. Shrill.

I say no and they look at me as if my mouth is full of staples. As if not wanting another child means I hate the one I have. Is it a crime to be this selfish with my body? It’s true: I don’t want more stretch marks because I hate the ones I have.

for Logan You slipped from the placenta, melted out of that paraffin into the yellow-blanket hug of your mother. A boy, we said together, breathless. Now your dresser full of pinks and auburns like a painter’s dawn needs emptying, re-filling of boyish hues and earth-tones.

My third-grade son returns from school. We ask about his day. He tells us of a multiplication quiz and the blacktop drama of recess kickball, then a pause. “But you can’t look in my backpack.” That, we tell him, is not an option.

This could be anywhere. This complex with its speckled tan and earth brick, khaki sidings, and hollow chocolate metal doors has a uniformed look. Just like the rest of this city. Flower Mound, Texas: affluent, religious, and white in polite smiles but never in the straight forwardness of a conversation.