Nicole Hospital-Medina
the PAPER poem
I found the paper
on the kitchen counter
under the peacock blue
Parenting magazine.
~
I would enter
a forest of animals,
a zebra, el loro, the ugly ducklings.
I would decorate a river
with golden butterflies
and lay my eggs on it.
~
The words:
Anora Miscarriage Test results.
This should be in a folder,
a drawer, a binder.
~
It would be like Easter.
All my eggs floating
safely on a raft
with the wink
of sun behind them.
~
Or,
should it be in that adorable
polka dot
pregnancy journal I bought?
~
If I were a turtle,
I could bundle them with sand
and then reconnect with the sea.
~
RESULTS: Abnormal Female
Keeping the Kids Apart
CNN is an infinite spiral
of spirals—a wormhole
my daughter yanks me out of.
We must keep a routine.
The house is speaking now. Listen.
On the sidewalk is everything
you need for a pandemic:
32 pieces of multicolored chalk,
cartoon fish, a red seahorse,
the bottle of bubbles spilled over,
a pink trucker hat—toddler size.
Next to us, a brand-new swing sweats in the sun.
These items keep us,
while we wait for men to tell us.
Men in dark suits to tell us
what to do while we play with chalk
and keep the toddlers apart.
Is this fear embedding
in her brain? Yesterday,
I pulled her away
from a boy who was approaching.
Nicole Hospital-Medina earned her MFA at the University of Miami where she now instructs writing. Her poems can be read in the anthologies, Poems from the Lockdown, Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, as well as in journals, CURA: A Journal of Art and Action, The Miami Herald, Linden Lane Magazine, Paper Nautilus, Blunderbuss Magazine, The Acentos Review, Canyon Voices and more. She is the winner of the Miami Herald O’Miami Haiku contest. Her paintings have been featured in Linden Lane Magazine and as cover art for the forthcoming chapbook, Myth America.