The Carrying - Ada Limón

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spine appointment, singing along

      to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,

      and I saw a mom take her raincoat off

      and give it to her young daughter when

      a storm took over the afternoon. My god,

      I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her

      raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel

      that I never got wet.

      THE VULTURE & THE BODY

      On my way to the fertility clinic,

      I pass five dead animals.

      First a raccoon with all four paws to the sky

      like he’s going to catch whatever bullshit load

      falls on him next.

      Then, a grown coyote, his golden furred body soft against the white

      cement lip of the traffic barrier. Trickster no longer,

      an eye closed to what’s coming.

      Close to the water tower that says “Florence, Y’all,” which means

      I’m near Cincinnati, but still in the bluegrass state,

      and close to my exit, I see

      three dead deer, all staggered but together, and I realize as I speed

      past in my death machine that they are a family. I say something

      to myself that’s between a prayer and a curse—how dare we live

      on this earth.

      I want to tell my doctor about how we all hold a duality

      in our minds: futures entirely different, footloose or forged.

      I want to tell him how lately, it’s enough to be reminded that my

      body is not just my body, but that I’m made of old stars and so’s he,

      and that last Tuesday,

      I sat alone in the car by the post office and just was

      for a whole hour, no one knowing how to find me, until

      I got out, the sound of the car door shutting like a gun,

      and mailed letters, all of them saying, Thank you.

      But in the clinic, the sonogram wand showing my follicles, he asks

      if I have any questions, and says, Things are getting exciting.

      I want to say, But what about all the dead animals?

      But he goes quicksilver, and I’m left to pull my panties up like a big girl.

      Some days there is a violent sister inside of me, and a red ladder

      that wants to go elsewhere.

      I drive home on the other side of the road, going south now.

      The white coat has said I’m ready, and I watch as a vulture

      crosses over me, heading toward

      the carcasses I haven’t properly mourned or even forgiven.

      What if, instead of carrying

      a child, I am supposed to carry grief?

      The great black scavenger flies parallel now, each of us speeding,

      intently and driven, toward what we’ve been taught to do with death.

      AMERICAN PHAROAH

      Despite the morning’s gray static of rain,

      we drive to Churchill Downs at 6 a.m.,

      eyes still swollen shut with sleep. I say,

       Remember when I used to think everything

       was getting better and better? Now I think

      it’s just getting worse and worse. I know it’s not

      what I’m supposed to say as we machine our

      way through the silent seventy minutes on 64

      over potholes still oozing from the winter’s

      wreckage. I’m tired. I’ve had vertigo for five

      months and on my first day home, he’s shaken

      me awake to see this horse not even race, but

      work. He gives me his jacket as we face

      the deluge from car to the Twin Spire turnstiles,

      and once deep in the fern-green grandstands I see

      the crowd. A few hundred maybe, black umbrellas,

      cameras, and notepads, wet-winged eager early birds

      come to see this Kentucky-bred bay colt with his

      chewed-off tail train to end the almost forty-year

      American Triple Crown drought. A man next to us,

      some horse racing bigwig, hisses a list of reasons

      why this horse—his speed-heavy pedigree, muscle

      and bone recovery, etcetera etcetera could never

      win the grueling mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes.

      Then the horse comes out, first just casually trotting

      with his lead horse, and all at once, a brief break

      in the storm, and he’s racing against no one

      but himself and the official clockers, monstrously

      fast and head down so we can see that faded star

      flash on his forehead like this is real gladness.

      As the horse eases up and all of us close our mouths

      to swallow, the big-talking guy next to us folds his arms,

      says what I want to say too: I take it all back.

      DANDELION INSOMNIA

      The big-ass bees are back, tipsy, sun drunk

      and heavy with thick knitted leg warmers

      of pollen. I was up all night again so today’s

      yellow hours seem strange and hallucinogenic.

      The neighborhood is lousy with mowers, crazy

      dogs, and people mending what winter ruined.

      What I can’t get over is something simple, easy:

      How could a dandelion seed head seemingly

      grow overnight? A neighbor mows the lawn

      and bam, the next morning, there’s a hundred

      dandelion seed heads straight as arrows

      and proud as cats high above any green blade

      of manicured grass. It must bug some folks,

      a flower so tricky it can reproduce asexually,

      making perfect identical selves, bam, another me,

      bam, another me. I can’t help it—I root

      for that persecuted rosette so hyper in its

      own making it seems to devour the land.

      Even its name, translated from

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