Yield
A woman swallows a bird
in an egg. This involves two
bodies: one that won’t produce
yet and one that won’t produce more.
The egg degrades like fruit or filament.
Anything fertile. Like seeds,
concerned with creation over desire.
In her body, daughters start
as a hum. Instruments strung
between bones. The daughters hollow
as feathers, as light after decay.
To release something further,
the woman considers what’s left.
The bird, she knows, has flown.
in an egg. This involves two
bodies: one that won’t produce
yet and one that won’t produce more.
The egg degrades like fruit or filament.
Anything fertile. Like seeds,
concerned with creation over desire.
In her body, daughters start
as a hum. Instruments strung
between bones. The daughters hollow
as feathers, as light after decay.
To release something further,
the woman considers what’s left.
The bird, she knows, has flown.
Imitation of Narcissus at Versailles
The baby I lost multiplies, builds itself
into a hall of mirrors, still as the gloss
of a pond. So much goes wrong:
no body, no reflection, no head
to drop forward, a mortal sun.
No reason to drown in this
missing projection. No heartbeat,
I tell it, but echoes. Could I lock
myself into these empty frames, I’d be
a stationary thing: the image of
a mother, an ending.
into a hall of mirrors, still as the gloss
of a pond. So much goes wrong:
no body, no reflection, no head
to drop forward, a mortal sun.
No reason to drown in this
missing projection. No heartbeat,
I tell it, but echoes. Could I lock
myself into these empty frames, I’d be
a stationary thing: the image of
a mother, an ending.
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Stefanie Kirby is the author of Fruitful (Driftwood Press, 2024), winner of the Adrift Chapbook Contest, and Remainder, forthcoming from Bull City Press. Her poetry has been included in Best of the Net and Poetry Daily, and appears in West Branch, Pleiades, The Massachusetts Review, The Moth, SAND, and elsewhere. She lives along Colorado’s Front Range with her family.
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