Fiction    Reading Room    Memoir    Interview

Tyler and Lily and Mozart

You don’t hear much crying in NICU.
The lungs of these babies lack breath
for crying. Their incubators mute
sounds. There’s electronic anxiety,
you hear its beeps, pings and bells. Also
a taut mother who tells a midwife
she’s sure something’s wrong with his face
and why won’t the doctors say, are they
hiding something? You hear two midwives’
soft talk as they change a feeding tube.
Another reaches through a porthole
of an incubator, lifts Tyler
(29 weeks) now eighteen days,
holds in her palm the least bottomy
bottom in the world and tells Tyler
he’s doing so well while a student
midwife changes his sheet. You hear wheels
on the firm floor and this faint sound,
as if you imagine music. Go
over to Lily, here since April,
but may get home to Nelson next week.
A blanket covers the curve of clear
plastic above her face. Put your ear
close. There. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
You and Lily listen to Mozart.
 
Poetry
Johanna Aitchison
Michele Amas
Angela Andrews
Sarah Barnett
David Beach
Ken Bolton
Jenny Bornholdt
Rachel Bush  
Mary Cresswell
Stephanie De Montalk
Cliff Fell
Tom Fitzsimons
Brian Flaherty
David Geary
Bernadette Hall
Kerry Hines
Andrew Johnston
Therese Lloyd
Iggy McGovern
Mary Macpherson
Dora Malech
Vana Manasiadis
Emma Neale
Gregory O'Brien
Lucy Orbell
Zach Savich
Charlotte Simmonds
Marty Smith
Elizabeth Smither
Abby Stewart
Robert Sullivan
Jo Thorpe
Cath Vidler
Louise Wallace
Ashleigh Young

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