7.09 / Parenting Issue
Editor’s Note
When I first approached Roxane about editing a parenting issue of PANK, we were both a tad unsure of just how it would shake out. Sure, many of us are writers and parents, but most of us -whether out of necessity or sanity- try our damndest to keep those two [...]
You know how sometimes you’re in your twenties in America
You know how sometimes you’re in your twenties in America and you’ve learned every lesson you’re ever going to learn about ten times already, and you start to realize that’s what learning is, not answering questions, but finding ways to ask the same questions over and over again?
You’re twenty-one or [...]
A Whole Mother Story
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This poem is also available as a PDF to preserve the poet’s original intent.
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Once [1] upon [2] a [3] time [4], there [6] was [7] a[8] mother[9]
1 Once: An understatement, a lie. Best to start false and work your way around.
2 upon: Taken abstractly. Not the same as standing upon on a table or traveling upon [...]
Hamster Babies
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Threads trail from the stuffed elephant’s face, and a bit of cotton peeks from the fresh wound. I pry a button-eye out of my son’s two-year old fist. He is unwilling to give up, and he surprises me with his strength. He shrieks when I take the [...]
Man Jumping From The Top of a Building
Today is my husband’s birthday and a man stands at the top of the world, worshipping the sky and Middle Eastern sun as it sets over the longest day of the year. Yossi said that he knew the guy would dive and went to bed. I don’t think he could [...]
Chosen Home
After moving into half double domestic
step-
life, a dispatch from the nearest shore
of my recent bachelor past
bobbed like a bottled message:
A chinese menu tri-folded into the door
like a throwing star. The wide-eyed
seven-year-old blonde buzz-saw
found it first–like sunken treasure or
my stash of wintergreen Tic-Tac’s. For
Bunny, the ink jet printer fed paper
menu was [...]
A Month After Her Birth
The bed is a cloud, and I am afraid
to step off into the cold otherworld,
to take her with me into the vaporous after.
I nestle in backwards, pose fetal and pull
her into the cocoon of comforter,
to the bulge of hot breast,
back to the body. I rest
and bide and tend.
Spring shows in [...]
Four Stories
Chloey was flying my model airplanes again. But that’s okay. They’re Styrofoam. When the wings fall off, or the nose pancakes, you use extra glue. We stood at the top of the hill. In front of us, a downward slope of dirt and grass gave the airplanes more room to [...]
Alphabet Puzzle
A is for ABC
This is the alphabet puzzle your grandmother gave me when I was a boy. I do not remember when I got it; it was always mine. This alphabet puzzle has never belonged to anyone else, until this moment, which you will not remember.
You have woken up looking [...]
The Importance of Believing in Mermaids
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Mel and her friend Kaylie are sunning away their innocence, their legs lined up and waiting behind them. Mel reaches back and adjusts the bottom of her American flag one-piece, which, we discovered this morning, is too small. She’d cried and said it was a baby suit [...]
To the New Parents at the PFLAG Meeting
If you are the parent of a queer child, you will not be punished for casting them out.
No one will arrest you for the exorcisms or threats; no one will fault your shame.
If you have a god, you may have to wrestle him for peace. You might win.
You can [...]
How to Make a Faux Lunch for Two Children
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9:00. First, try not to be late for preschool kiss & play drop-off. Even one minute late, you might have to parallel park your minivan, and you’re not so good at that. You might bump into that pole by the edge of the sidewalk again, and your [...]
Nine Babies on Ice
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We have a cohort of children-one for every reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh, an entire baseball team of kids.
Caleb hates mashed peas, Rhea perks up in the afternoon, Geo is a future astrologist, Jase sucks her pinkies, Ariana is near-sighted, Ty prefers to be alone, Will has a [...]
Ten Things I Do Not Tell Anyone About My Child
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1. I love her the most when I am drinking my morning coffee at work. She is at school. School is over five kilometres away. There are no grubby hands hanging on to the hem of my dress. There are no crayons and lopsided stuffed toys on [...]
The Book of Manners for Mothers
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I am not supposed to say “Make me a sammich, bitch!”
Not even in jest.
Not supposed to say “Baby got Bounce.”
Mothers are not supposed to
flash peace signs
break into spontaneous Douggie
or use the interrogative “Dude?”
the statement “Dude. Seriously.”
or the exclamatory “Duuuuuuuuuude!”
Nowhere in my Book of Manners for Mothers
does it [...]
At Six Months
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I feel the eel of her
skim the undersurface
of my skin. It’s
alive. Now, I imagine
everyone I meet emerging,
rumpled and wet, betwixt legs.
The birthing room dank
with the breath
between screams.
Shrill.
We are bonded,
those of us who have, for whatever reason,
cried together. The cords between us
variously thick
and glistening. It’s tough
to be alive. [...]
When People Ask If I’m Going To Give Evelyn A Brother Or Sister
I say no and they look at me as if my mouth is full of staples. As if not wanting another child means I hate the one I have. Is it a crime to be this selfish with my body? It’s true: I don’t want more stretch marks because I [...]
Delivery
for Logan
You slipped from the placenta, melted
out of that paraffin into the yellow-blanket hug
of your mother. A boy, we said together,
breathless. Now your dresser full of pinks
and auburns like a painter’s dawn needs emptying,
re-filling of boyish hues and earth-tones.
The ultrasounds brushed
out the layers of you in grayscale-
your upturned face, the [...]
On Longing
My third-grade son returns from school. We ask about his day. He tells us of a multiplication quiz and the blacktop drama of recess kickball, then a pause. “But you can’t look in my backpack.†That, we tell him, is not an option. He explains he has to write a [...]
Mismatched Socks
This could be anywhere. This complex with its speckled tan and earth brick, khaki sidings, and hollow chocolate metal doors has a uniformed look. Just like the rest of this city. Flower Mound, Texas: affluent, religious, and white in polite smiles but never in the straight forwardness of a conversation.
Our [...]