Poetry By M. Cortney Daniels

       Kirandeep Atwal CC



UPON HEARING OF MY UNTIMELY END, I WRITE A POEM
TO THE MOTHER WHO NEVER KNEW ME
    
                                                                                                 “. . .it wasn’t obvious she was pregnant.
                                                                                                           Her mother sent her to Montreal.
                                                                                   . . . knew it was a girl . . . told me she had died.”
    
                                                                           From notes my found brother shared with me 
                                                                                                                  after a phone conversation
                                                                                                              with my mother’s best friend.
    
                                                  in memoriam: Marie Noella Aline Mackay (8/1931-10/2003)
                                                                          for my half-brother, Bill Spurge (7/1956-2/2021)

It’s six o’clock;
dead babies don’t talk.
Neither day nor dark--
dead babies don’t talk.
No more to say—he left that day.
You let him walk.
Dead babies don’t talk.

This plan was unwritten. Dead babies
don’t quicken. Turn off the spark.
Dead babies don’t talk. See in the mirror
your little dark error? Why feed the lie--
dead babies don’t cry. Starve yourself--
tarnish the heart. Rub me out--
until death us do part.

You went to term & felt me squirm.
I challenged the order & crossed the border.
Four pounds was enough. It wasn’t love.
You heard me squawk. Dead babies don’t talk.
The doctors said I had your face--
a kind of smudge you could erase.
Dead babies occupy no space.
You signed me away—your sudden
stranger—because dead babies
pose no danger.

They told you forget it.
Your best friend went quiet.
Don’t worry my mother--
I lived & defied it. But you
went one way. I went another.
Dead babies have no chance
with their mother.

No time to recover, you pulled yourself
together, married some New Yorker
(forget her) (forget her).
Made quick a new baby.
Maybe this time was better.
It all turns out. He looks like his father.
His breath brushed your chest
when you held him to rock--
woke the echo, the echo:
dead babies don’t talk.

The whole arrangement couldn’t last,
You took me with you when you passed.
But you’re his mother, & he’s my brother.
Nothing stopped us from finding each other.
Membranes will rupture & secrets are borne.
Your despair fed my hunger. Dead babies
come home. Given by you: this girl
so nameless—forgiven by him. 
We all can go blameless.




​Cortney Daniels received an MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has published in Intro, Carolina Quarterly, Mississippi Valley Review, Well-Versed, & others. Now retired, she enjoys dancing, biking, quilting, volunteering, & traveling. She lives in Columbia, MO, with her spouse & two cats where writes poetry & creative nonfiction.
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