ELEGY Poem: Elegy for a Miscarriage, by Evelyn Torres

In dreams
the miasma of rebirth flows and
I wake with the sheets stained red
between my legs

It aches, the bottomless hole of
life, where my babies were
cursed

To die again in the darkness of
ignorance, with the first flutter of life
beating quickly and without meaning
a cluster of endless
possibility, endless
death.

I cannot go back to sleep
chasing reason with the lame
dogs of science barking,
at nothing
at shadows
at lies,
barking at every answer,
useless.

Faith is worse,
for the labor of death is angelic
and I have seen that real angels
die
and god’s love blisters
into the fiery pain of this hell
I am trying to escape…

What is a mother?
our aborted children bleed and
the womb consumes all
sacred miasma of flesh
drowning flush of desire and
a heartbeat that echoes
echoes on the scans into nothingness.
A mother is all
of her children.

I need to move my mewling
yearling, darling boy,
so the blood doesn’t touch him,
or his older brother quietly
blissfully
dreaming