The Decision Not To Breastfeed

by Lorrie Ness

Ivan Radulovich

When Grandma’s water burst, it baptized her feet

as a sacrament & scourged her like a saint.

She spread newspapers atop the bed

& let the ads bleed onto her damp thighs

until a Liquidation Sale tattoo

blazed across her skin. When her belly spilled

roe across the circulars, she searched her lips

for fishhooks, plumbed her throat & found a barb.

She pushed it through her gullet,

pain naming Mama as a wound. When she cried,

Grandma untied her bandana & wrung it on Mama’s lips,

suckling her with sweat. She sang lullabies

as Mama drank of gingham & salt—taking care

her lips never latched, that Mama never developed

a taste for flesh.

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Lorrie Ness is a writer in Northern Virginia. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net Prizes. Her works appear in numerous journals including: Palette Poetry, trampset, PoetryONL, The Rappahannock Review, The Inflectionist Review and Sky Island Journal. She is the author of two collections: Heritage & Other Pseudonyms and Anatomy of a Wound, which were published by Flowstone Press.