YÉMIÍTÀN
If you would stay do stay
Please tease me no longer
My body, no more can bear
But my heart, yet still craves
My womb you make hollow
My hopes many times dashed
How can you be so heartless
With visits that never last
Yémiítàn, my precious child
This foolery is so much pain
Desist your antics my child
A mother can no longer bear
You prey on my deep desire
You tease with your to and fro
Why mock me in my despair
Àbíkú omo, òdájú ènìyàn
I know you, you little trictster
I can sense your deep longings
Too many a time have visited
To visit me yet never stay
So with cowries will I bind you
And with red dust to earth tie you
With deep marks will I brand you
And ensure you never again leave.
FICTIONAL POEM FOR CONTEST
I sailed through my pregnancy without a problem
We’d painted the nursery in pale blue
I was having
A little boy
I'd stroke my swollen belly every time he kicked
we joked he'd be a great football player
tragically he’d never kick a ball
no one knows why he stopped moving on my due date
The doctors could not save my child
Why was my baby born sleeping?
My precious son
You never cried
F I C T I O N P O E M W R I T T E N F O R
n/a in Fragmented Verse Poetry Contest
(n/a because the line spacing was incorrect for the form - now amended)
02/15/21
Thee news of her pregnancy came as her best joy.
It was what she had always wanted.
To be a mother to a little boy fourty weeks later she went into labour
Finally, she gets to meet the life growing inside her.
Her body's small neighbour
One she held so dear.She pushed and she pushed.
Felt the physical pain of her baby's head leaving her body.
Then she finally finished pushing and was flushed.
She heard no cry from her baby.It was a stillbirth.
She wept and wept as she held him.
Baby born straight into the arms of death.
Oh, how she loved him and named him NgazibiniThe life that was no longer growing within.
How should she let go?
She'd give anything to feel him inside, kicking.
But sadly he is gone and all she can say is, "No!"
There have been moments in my life enjoyed
more for the forest than the fallen leaves.
White drops of ink that improbably bleed
right off their journal to rupture the void
no one had known existed ‘til destroyed
by the birth of a daughter her father needs
in such a way that such a need exceeds
all fathomable measurements employed.
The type of moment that tames tedium
and makes it bearable: a mismatched sock
in hand to the sock on foot - every time
worth a grin when the laundry stacks up grim;
the type I once stood on admiring my flock
‘til grey wolves in weeds taught my daughters rhyme.
For nine months I nurtured you
But you were not mine to keep
You didn’t cry when you were born
But I was crying
In fact, I was screaming hysterically
The doctor tried everything to save you,
but it was no use
He told me you were stillborn
I said “No, she was born sleeping”
God had other plans for you
He needed another angel in heaven
Now my baby girl plays there with her toys
My womb is empty … so is my heart
FICTION WRITE for Broken-hearted Contest
Sponsored by Broken Wings
10-13-17
From the very moment you were conceived I loved you
I could feel you kick, as a new life grew inside me
One day you stopped moving, and tragically I knew
Holding my newborn baby was never meant to be
Original Laura Loo's contest Weepy Quatrain awarded 1st place
Submitted to best poem from any of Laura Loo's contests
03~29~16
STILLBIRTH
Pregnant and overdressed
Lazily dozing o’er the riverbank pond
Autumn trees, fat with leaves caressed
By the frost , every frond
Ready to be borne out of sight
By the river’s waves aglow
Like Roman shields burnished bright
Facing their vanquished Sabine foe
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .
Note
Sabines were a people living near ancient Rome, and the Sabine women
were kidnapped en masse by Roman soldiers, to increase the population of Rome.
Between want and desire
few crumbs of words
will not satisfy.
Facts and perception
build a latticed smile
between tears.
Discreetly life catches
a miasm, a fault
to commit suicide.
When will the exile end,
of hope, a holy womb?
The stink was rising.
Amnesty for amniotic fluid,
fetus was dead
Godmother was crying.
SATISH VERMA
Between want and desire
few crumbs of words
will not satisfy.
Facts and perception
build a latticed smile
between tears.
Discreetly life catches
a miasm, a fault
to commit suicide.
When will the exile end,
of hope, a holy womb?
The stink was rising.
Amnesty for amniotic fluid,
fetus was dead
Godmother was crying.
SATISH VERMA