New poetry by Karyn Lie-Nielsen

cabildoquarterly:

Demeter and Persephone in Odessa, Missouri
1918-1922

1918
My momma said all she needed
after her man took off
was a sack of dried beans
and plenty of split wood under cover.

Then I came squeezing through
the difficult dark, too sick to cry
and hot as rolled-up rags the midwife
had…