Woman-Stirred* is having a free** poetry*** contest****
* Woman-Stirred is an online literary salon
* No entry fee, open to everyone
* Who has the best poem on the subject “mother”?
* Winner gets poem published on Woman-Stirred, plus lots of prizes!
Click here for all the details
Mother
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Happy Birthday—
My Son the Man
Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
while people were putting him in chains. It seems
no time since I would help him put on his sleeper,
guide his calves into the gold interior,
zip him up and toss him up and
catch his weight. I cannot imagine him
no longer a child, and I know I must get ready,
get over my fear of men now my son
is going to be one. This was not
what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a
sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,
snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,
and appeared in my arms, what I had always wanted,
my son the baby. Now he looks at me
the way Houdini studied a box
to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.
—-Sharon Olds
You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
—-Margaret Atwood, from Power Politics——-Happy Birthday
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