WHOSE STORY? WHOSE CHOICE?

by Laurie Rosen

Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz/AMS via The Washington Post.

I am 35, 

I am 19, 

I am 12. 

Put a bounty on my head,

on my confidants and advisers

my doctor, too. 

Sue the office administrators,

the taxi driver that brought me.

Come for me with handcuffs.

Restrain my arms behind my back,

haul me off to jail.

Lock me up behind bars, 

Throw away the key.

Call me a murderer, baby killer. 

Selfish, hateful. 

I plead guilty. I don’t deny it. 

But, look me in the eyes 

and tell me I am not speaking 

your story or your lover’s,

your sister’s, your best friend’s,

maybe even your daughter’s. 

I am 35, mark my body   state controlled,  

I am 19, proclaim my uterus   conscripted,

I am 12, classify my heartbeat   irrelevant.

Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poems have appeared in Sisyphus, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Oddball Magazine, Soul-Lit, The New Verse News, and elsewhere. 

RELATING TO HEARTBEAT

an erasure of Texas Senate Bill 8: relating to abortion, including abortions after detection of an unborn child's heartbeat; authorizing a private civil right of action

by Rebekah Wolman

An empty room used to perform procedures at Whole Woman’s Health of Austin on Sept. 1, 2021, the day anti-abortion Senate Bill 8, the so-called Heartbeat Bill, became law.  Credit: Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune.

                                    private

life

            means

                                       activity

 

                        the human female reproductive

condition

                 is carrying

 

choice about

                                    surviving

            consistent with

                        a manner that is   

                                                at least as

private

                        as

                                    an action

            or mistake

                                                or

reliance on consent

                        not construed

    as

            rape, sexual assault, incest, or any other act

                                   

                                    against

women

            women

                                    the rights of

women

            a woman

                                    that woman

 

                                                a woman

 

the potential danger to

            the possibility of risk

                                                to the

 

child without regard to

                       

                        the                    child

 

is not

 

            known

 

whether

                                    or

 

Rebekah Wolman is a retired educator living in San Francisco and rededicating her life to poetry.

A PRAYER FROM LOUISIANA

by Gail White





God bless the oysters
I can eat alive
because they have no heartbeat.

God bless the feral cats
who have no control
over their fertility,
and the women who had it once
but lost it.

God bless the migrant children
who die in US custody
whose lives don’t matter
because they are post-unborn.

God bless the deer
To the hunters,
The fish to the net,
The faithful to their homes,
The children to their mothers’ arms.


Gail White is a formalist poet with work in many journals, including Measure, Light, First Things, and Hudson Review. She is a two-time winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. Her latest book Catechism was published in 2016 by White Violet Press.