Elegy for the Abandoned Poem
Conceived in a white-hot
moment, it mewls for attention,
so you swaddle & tuck it
into a satiny fold, say you’ll
come back soon, let it cry itself
to a kind of silence that
doesn’t last, the fresh noise
of everyday crowding,
crowding
until you return to find it
gone. A moment of distraction
& you become that mother
racing through the mall, hysteria
ratcheting to aria, shrieking my baby,
my baby,
my baby,
while knowing
all you cared for is crossing
the border in another woman’s
arms. Every word you strung
together on a filament, delicate
as a bracelet around a newborn’s
wrist, fading like a face
you hardly knew
but are desperate
to recall.
Sonia Greenfield is the author of two full-length collections of poetry. Letdown, released in March, was selected for the 2020 Marie Alexander Series and published by White Pine Press. Her collection, Boy With a Halo at the Farmer’s Market, won the 2014 Codhill Poetry Prize and was published in 2015. Her chapbook, American Parable, won the 2017 Autumn House Press chapbook prize. Her work has appeared in a variety of places, including in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, Antioch Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, and Willow Springs. She lives with her husband, son, and two rescue dogs in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College and edits the Rise Up Review.
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