Two Poems

by Victoria Barycz


Born
​
While I was crowning
my mother gritting her teeth
through one last contraction
my father was down the hall at the cheapest snack machine
pressing P10 for a KitKat
 
My mother’s first and only daughter
after five miscarriages
but as my mother saw the matted black hair
covering my scalp 
she touched her own dark braid
and began to weep
 
I thought of my mother last night
wondering if at that moment
when the beads of sweat
dotted her upper lip
and the bar of chocolate slowly slid forward
in the snack machine
she knew all I would endure
because I wasn’t born with the tangerine wisps
of my brothers
or the calves of Atlas


Stigmata

Looking out the smudged glass
on the 23rd floor
of Henry Ford Hospital
I have a religious experience
 
The last one had been at nine
having discovered Michael
in our backyard
ear to the ground
to better hear God
at eleven he was wise
in way only little sisters could understand
 
Now staring out at the crude rendition
of the Virgin Mary
breasts exposed on the crumbling brick
of another abandoned Detroit project
I wonder if he’s even going to visit today
 
Climbing into my mother’s hospital bed
I press my ear
to her chest
holding my breath
I listen by myself
to the grating phlegm in my mother’s chest.