By Pamela Wax

Con­sid­er how having a uterus made one suspect, how

the Egyp­tians com­pared the womb to a beast

besieg­ing the female body; how the Greeks prescribed

wine and orgies; Freud, mar­riage. How any malady

could be a symptom, how “nervous weak­ness” kept

her home where she belonged. And remember

the schem­ing of Charles Boyer, how he nearly

drove Ingrid round the bend, dis­tract­ing her

from his crimes, their house lights flickering

and noises out of nowhere. Now picture that strike

of geese, how Sully Sul­len­berg­er piloted that plane

to safe landing on the Hudson, how such col­li­sions cost

air­lines bil­lions a year, all those wings and feathers,

those mangled engines: how they hatched

a plan, oiled the eggs behind the goose’s back,

smoth­er­ing. Imagine this would-be mother, her instinct

for nesting. How her eggs will never hatch, no matter

how many she lays, or days she broods. “Addling”

describes this avian version of mind­fuck. The mother,

hys­ter­i­cal, who sits and sits in the dark, expecting.

PAMELA WAX is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Fin­ish­ing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have received a Best of the Net nom­i­na­tion and awards from Cross­winds, Pater­son Lit­er­ary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robin­son Jeffers Tor House. She has been pub­lished in dozens of lit­er­ary jour­nals includ­ing Barrow Street, Tupelo Quar­ter­ly, The Mass­a­chu­setts Review, Chau­tauqua, The MacGuf­fin, Nimrod, Sol­stice, Mudfish, Con­necti­cut River Review, Val­paraiso Poetry Review, and Slip­pery Elm. An ordained rabbi, Pam offers spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and poetry work­shops online and around the country. She lives in the North­ern Berk­shires of Mass­a­chu­setts. 

This poem orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 21. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Saad Chaudhry