What Rough Beast | Poem for August 29, 2018

Shana Ross
Modern Motherhood

This is not a song of comfort
Only a plain heaviness;
I know you are looking for
Silver linings, hope uncovered.

Not every stone can be polished, turned
Until you find the angle where light flashes.
Some are meant to be swallowed whole
This fact, its implications, the weight of words
Should stay in your belly.

When I meet my son’s teachers
The first question I ask myself
Is whether this person is willing
To die for my child, if it comes to that.

Shana Ross is a poet and playwright with a BA and MBA from Yale University. Her writing career has been dormant for 18 years for reasons both practical and best discussed in therapy. This decade, her work has been published in Anapest Journal, SHANTIH Journal, and Writers Resist.

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