Selected Poetry by Lindsay Zier-Vogel 

Developed during the research for “What She Holds”

A boulder

Her midwife told her to reach down

to touch her baby

and she did as she was told

because she was desperate to be good at this thing

she knew she was failing at.

She wanted a gold star,

she wanted to be told 

she was doing everything right.

But it was hard,

too hard, this skull

that was a stone,

and she wished between contractions

that she had said no,

that she had not confirmed

that this was indeed impossible,

this impatient boulder

pretending to be a baby.

The hallway

The hallway is long in the middle of the night,

longer than it is in the afternoon

or in the morning

when the light falls from the window

in a rectangle, clear and bright.

In the middle of the night,

the hallway is forever,

time slipping over the floorboards

and sliding over the railing.

Time makes no sense in the hallway

in the middle of the night,

her limbs loose with sleep,

and the ache of milk draws

one foot in front of the other—

an exhausted tightrope.

How to avoid thinking about tomorrow

Have a baby with a fever

hot and asleep on your chest,

threatening to burn the house down. 

Left right

She sways now

when she waits to cross the street,

when she is in line at the grocery store,

when she talks to her mom on the phone,

shifting left, right, 

keeping the baby that is no longer

strapped to her chest, 

asleep.

Knots

He knots his rage

in angry knuckles,

curling himself as tight as a fist

behind the stools in the kitchen,

under the dining room table,

in the corner of his room, under his desk,

making himself as small as he was 

when he arrived,

before his limbs knew 

how to take up space.

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