SCI-FI/FANTASY Poem: Being the Universe’s Midwife, by Cassandra Manzolillo

I am helping the universe give birth to itself.
I was a midwife before wives existed & God
is in the kitchen cooking up a storm of alphabet soup.
I see a tiny black hole & I go go go
There’s no time for a corny joke
about the Big Bang beating all the religious brains.
There are no brains, only atoms that spiral out
from a singular microscopic dot
that I am trying to soak up & splotch all
of the gas the universe is letting out (& believe me, there’s tons of it)
I will complain later;
there is no time. I am nursing a life
back in time & praying it stays there.
Now it is my right to push all of the galaxies out at once.
I stroke the sides of the dot as a childhood doll.
I feel for the universe
I know how much is riding on this to work.
Out pops a galaxy, crying
in fat rainbow tears that

fall
to the endless barrel of darkness hitting
an imaginary oor like a drum.
I stu the galaxy with a binky
made of cosmic dust & then kick it away.
It twirls as a ribbon then oats higher & higher
before dropping so fast I am in human pain.
I know I will never see it again
I didn’t give that one a name, that is my shame.
I look back to the dot which is the universe & think
it has seen better days.
I reach out a palm to tell her
she is doing a great job.
But she icks me away & says I am not t to do this.
A pit forms in my stomach.
The universe reeks of armpit, oatmeal raisin cookies & truth
She belches in my crow’s feet, wrinkled face.
She commands
you are incapable of raising your own life. How could you stick around & raise a universe?
I wanted to light a re in my throat & be the rst wildre.
I wanted to gather all of the water in the world & drink until I burst
but all I did was stick out my tongue
(a pathetic school girls only power)
The universe did the same but it wasn’t
a tongue she lurched out but every- galaxy, star, planet, energy, matter, nebulae, physical reality,
alternate dimension, & it was perfect & endless & cold & all you could ever really ask for, a chance to
see
what would make it out alive

I woke up shivering,
delivering my last bit of hallucinatory deance with a drooling tongue…

I was back to me.

Thirty-Nine years old without a child
to call back home. I knew the universe was trying
to protect me in that dream. I would have done the same,
as any mother would.

But now was not the time for protection.
It was nally time to take a chance.