Editor's Note
At first glance, it appears like Shannon Guglielmo’s poems trace the journey of a pregnancy from 17 weeks to 29 weeks. But of course, the poems are more than that. For one, despite their chronological order, they are not linear and their beginnings are deliciously deceptive and simple. The speaker begins from mundane phrases like a supermarket, or with an introduction (“Hi, it’s me”) or spends their mornings examining their organs, or tells us about their “one-way broadcast to bump” before launching into a world that is not reality per se. These poems are as clinical as they are sentimental, as invested in the simplicity of language as they are in scientific terminology. Consider for instance, the phrase, ‘Braxton-Hicks ice cream crying’ or the tenderness of lines such as, ‘not ever speak to someone but house them / not really know someone but feel them.’ They make me wonder, delight and remember all that we hold inside ourselves, the past and future, the born and the unborn.
— Devanshi Khetarpal
The Bombay Literary Magazine
Aisles (17 weeks pregnant)
I dream I’m in the supermarket
shopping for your face your voice
fasciae & muscles among
cranberry juice dish detergent tin foil
wheel to gallbladder pancreas kidney then
lungs ventricles nexus to practice breathing
beating. In the fervor I pick out
your forthcoming guttural sounds
screech prayer & supine gaze
how you’ll stomp through loam
volatile formidable gentle
I make a covenant there in the produce section
I say,
This is what I’m doing now
I’m incubating clandestine
art in my pouch
slung across my middle
I loop through the shop for
discerning brows humor
tireless mirth
heart
the remaining items:
When does brain turn to mind?
How does longing turn to soul?
Voicemail (23 weeks pregnant)
Hi it’s me I was just calling to let you know I’m exhausted and sinewy I haven’t thought about making dinner but I did get one of those giant pretzels because I was unbelievably hungry and it’s like my ribs are constricting my body my organs are shifting like plate tectonics creating life like how water vapor from erupting volcanoes gave Earth oxygen I don’t want to do laundry or errands or nest I just want to sleep without my bladder being a dripping faucet-sieve I want to feel the algae slime barnacles on the pier as I slink into the ocean plunging deep my blood corporeal heart pounding throbbing until I’m weightless gills crackling through scales covering my skin with luster glinting off sunlight heaving catharsis I’ll swim where the trackers can’t locate my body I’ll labor push become mother there the water my dark reverent velvet.
Radio (27 weeks pregnant)
One-way broadcast to bump
twitchy static amniotic frequencies
My worry of the unknown manifests in
groans Braxton-Hicks ice cream crying
I want you to be plucky
come out with pink-faced gumption
but it’s exhausting to have epiphanies
every other moment
to be awash with wonder
not ever speak to someone but house them
not really know someone but feel them
Lungs (29 weeks pregnant)
I spent the morning examining my organs plus
the ones I was growing when my grandfather
called. We were never close when I was a child
but now that I was swollen with creature
my placenta breathing oxygen like stomata
on a leaf my finger flesh turgid I found myself
homesick for him. After nine decades his memory
was still a neat-pin dusted room with lit lamps
flanking files block letters streets names birthdays
While we were on the phone he had a lung-deep
coughing fit. I could sense his stinging toes
numb pricked fingers. He told me about
new shoes for Christmas in a cold-water flat
punch cards in a computer the size of a room
living with his lover as she lost her mind
As the call ended I realized if he was
a soldier turned cop turned professor
who’s to say I couldn’t burst-smash catapult
from the carapace I’d built around myself
shards of my shell melting off to glow
Author | SHANNON GUGLIELMO
SHANNON GUGLIELMO is a poet and math teacher in New York City. Her recent work is featured or forthcoming in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Right Hand Pointing and Green Ink Poetry. She is a Math for America Master Teacher and a recipient of the Fund for Teachers Fellowship.