1. I am born

Crushing, brutish struggle,
head gripped harshly
then painful release;
immediately there is loss,
a taking of something
that has become vital
to my cracked existence.

Mother what have you done
to make this barely tenuous
nail-scratch survival even more
impossible for a girl to manage?

Manhandled by nurses with hands
icy in their contempt for me;
laid out on barren gurney,
stuck with needles and pinched to pink
out from my natural blue undertone.

Left finally alone in unheated incubator,
to slip between this dreary place
and the warm solace of extinction.
I am no rough beast
this is not Jerusalem.

Someone plugged in the machine
so that the succor of frozen death
was denied to me even this first day.