• Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook Twitter Instagram
Facebook Twitter Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home»Curated»Challenging the Traditional Motherhood Poem»Teri Cross Davis

Teri Cross Davis

0
By Mom Egg Review on September 13, 2017 Challenging the Traditional Motherhood Poem, Poetry

Teri Cross Davis

 

Two Glasses of Milk

If I were to leave them
two glasses of milk,
don’t write about that,
write about the napkin-
the perfect triangle tucked
around the circle of glass,
the absorbed condensation.

If I were to leave them
two glasses of milk, it would be
the tension of motherhood
and career, poet and wife
pulling like teeth at my
extended nipples until I was
greedily consumed in silence.

If I were to leave them
two glasses of milk,
even across my tombstone
would be the words:
daughter, wife, mother.
Identities like anchors,
so heavy I would carry
them even after death.

“Two Glasses of Milk” by Teri Ellen Cross Davis from Haint (Gival Press, 2016). Reprinted by permission of Gival Press.

*Note: The poem “Two Glasses of Milk” references Sylvia Plath’s suicide. On February 11, 1963, Plath placing her head in a gas oven. She left bread and milk for her two children, sleeping upstairs.

 

The Return of the Prodigal Mother

Here’s what I am supposed to want:
a husband, children, a pretty jeweled
leash. That I run thru his hands

like eel innards —you hate me for it.
That I whelped his rats, milked them even,
and that’s not all I need — you hate me for that too.

Know this— I crave the wind, its lashing
promise. At night I dance untethered under
swollen clouds, let the humid air suckle my skin.

But for now, I shout through pursed and painted lips.
I kick back with a dainty-slippered foot. I breech this birth.
This time blonde, next brunette, I will come back. Again and again and again.

* The Return of the Prodigal Mother is after paintings of the same name by the artist Dawn Black.
“The Return of the Prodigal Mother” by Teri Ellen Cross Davis from Haint (Gival Press, 2016). Reprinted by permission of Gival Press.


Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint, winner of the a 2017 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry, a Cave Canem fellow and has received scholarships to attend the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleJP Howard  
Next Article Sarah Browning

Comments are closed.

February 1, 2023

Poem of the Month – February 2023

January 14, 2023

Judgment

January 14, 2023

Blair Hurley – Breastfeeding and the Early Sacrifices of Motherhood

January 14, 2023

M.A.M.A. issue 54 – Mathilde Jansen and Lisa DeSiro

January 14, 2023

Maram Al-Masri – Poetry

January 14, 2023

Noreen Graf – After Your Mother Dies and What If I Don’t

January 14, 2023

Cristi Ackerman Wells- My Mother

January 14, 2023

Starr Davis – Strange Fruits

January 14, 2023

Elīna Eihmane – Night Mommy

January 14, 2023

Heather Lanier – Origin Story with Porcelain Duck

Copyright © 2022 MER and Mom Egg Review
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.