Melissa DeGezelle

LULL, MATERNAL

Bamboo's not enough.
Masked bear, scanning
the grass for the second one.
Panda cubs are nameless, sometimes
for 100 days.

Vanity Fair features Baby Suri after 139 days.

Slack arm, awkward Ya Ya,
half-mother
dropped the younger twin,
white-fuzzed and blind,
crushed under somnolent weight.

Mainstream experts advise against the family bed, warn
of suffocation.

Two years with stud Ling Ling, and a mating video,
born to reproduce, cute pandas,
furry fetish
mother – who may have killed
the weaker one out of captivity, anyway.

9months pregnant porn –pull hair of white trash bitch-
she deserves it in the ass.

Steady nursing of the twin, 1/900 th
of her size
rocking in paws, warming muzzle.
Mother wasn't eating, not sleeping.
They took the stronger one first.

4 cycles of clomid, injectibles, IUI, IVF–positive
twins, one with Down's Syndrome – Elective Multi-fetal
abortion.

Still searching for dead cub. Live cub
not to be returned. Leaking milk. Waking
with milk leaking.
Milk everywhere, sticky fur
she relentlessly laps.

Midwife sends note: Sage tea and frozen cabbage leaves. Do not express colostrum.

They say the guttural depression will last
for months, Ya Ya dreams
of the organs-crushed infant
stolen in sleep, post-partum,
cradling her food bowl
of wild yams.