By Andrea England
The baby born into a subway toilet
between Harvard and Porter
Baby
with the too-big head and ears
that flap in the wind from a smack
Baby addicted to crack turned
blue as a bruise in his birthday suit
Baby unwanted and doesn’t know why
His father raped his mother
Baby taken
and fostered and fostered and
jailed for no crime of his own
Baby who commits suicide at nine
with a needle spooned from the shelter
of homelessness
Baby hit by the hunger of
water just to be wet
Black baby White
baby
Baby nursed by wolves or cats
Baby who killed his mother and
died anyway in the NICU of broken
hearts or the
Baby kept in a shed of his own
milk and blood
Beaten like a drum, in the back
alley of our glorious forsaken nation.
Andrea England is the author of Other Geographies (2017, Creative Justice Press) and Inventory of a Field (2014, Finishing Line Press). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Potomac Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Fourteen Hills Review, and others.. Most recently she had the honor of being a Writer-in-Residence at Firefly Farms (SAFTA). She lives and works in Kalamazoo Michigan, where she teaches English and Creative Writing for various universities and organizations. To learn and read more about her and her work, visit andreajengland.com.
Photo credit: Photo by Palash Jain on Unsplash.
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