I have to admit that I love the challenge of doing prompts in general but especially these prompts from Rachel McKibbens.
~~~~~
Secrets of the Birthing Machines
Do you remember the day you were born?
We do. Charged with your care, we did our duty:
Our job to care for small humans not able to care for themselves
when the others are not there to see.
--
I remember.
I recall the shock of emergence.
Stories of generations came from the spilled blood.*
All the mothers of my family since the beginning of time back to Eve
wrote their tales into my genes.
A lover's name came riding out on my first gasp for life.*
This premonition of perfection held no clues
yet I held on to it all my days.
Mama's breath was perfect on my scalp
The soft kisses she gave me told me the purest truth and
her embrace was the only home I needed.
Why wouldn't I cry when glove-handed nurses
separated me from the only place I knew?
--
Do you remember your time with us?
We were always with you.
When you slept and all the others were away
folded into chairs in the corner,
evaporated through vents in the ceiling,
turned to rolled wheels
and painted stripes on the highway,
we were there.
--
I remember.
You kept me company in the dust of midnights
until they returned me to Mama's comfort
and the soothing warm milk from her heart.
I borrowed her face and voice as mirror and echo.
Her hands held all the things I could not yet grasp.
--
Do you remember what we shared with you?
Life is electric.
The beep/beat is how you know you're alive.
Sometimes the things that help you live are cold.
--
I remember.
Papa held me as if I might not come back.
Even though he knew that I was not the one who would leave.
He would be the one to become a faded Polaroid
in the back of a dusty forgotten album.
Although I am light years and millennia away,
I still feel the things from born day.
These are the foundation for my mind
and all the things since and to come.
~~~~~
From Rachel McKibbens' blog:
THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2009 WRITING EXERCISE #14
Remember the day you were born? Which person in that room did you trust? Which person had the coldest hands? What secrets did the machines pass to you? Who held you as if you might not come back? What lover's name came riding out on your first breath? Where did everyone go when you slept? What soothed your hunger? What stories came from the spilled blood? Whose face/voice/legs/eyes did you borrow before you learned your own?
- - - -
(With love and great thanks to the remarkably phenomenal heart and eye of Diane Arbus.)
~~~~~
Personal note on the process...
The instructions didn't have "ingredients" this time, just a lot of questions about how to describe the day I (the writer) was born. The one that jumped out at me was "What secrets did the machines pass to you?" These are the things that came to me:
- Life is electric
- The beep beat is how you know you're alive <<< This one makes me want to do a poem about how to know your alive or the things that make me feel alive or something like that.
- sometimes the things that help you live are cold
The whole list of questions could have each been a single prompt really. The next question that stuck out at me was "What lover's name came riding out on your first breath?" The very idea was intriguing to me. It reminded me somewhat of how I once imagined what if I travelled back in time and was there the day my first lover was born when I was six years old (surprisingly, I never wrote a poem about that thought). This is not the same as what the prompt question asks though. I don't know how I would express the answer to this question even though I really like the idea of it.
The next question that piqued my interest was "What stories came from the spilled blood?" My mind immediately had the image of a middle ages birth on a kitchen table with the blood splashing out onto the floor as the baby was released from her gestation home. This also reminded me of things I thought years ago. I had a vision once of the memory my blood has in my X chromosomes like a computer drive constantly gathering information (and wrote a poem about it that I now can't find). In the vision, I read the story of my mothers going backwards in time through the generations all the way to the house of David about 2000 years ago. Since I can't find the original poem, I thought I would try to put a bit of this idea in this new poem.
Rachel didn't post an example for this prompt. I know that I don't write in the same style as her and my imagery is much softer (for lack of a better word), but I like to see what she does and how she expresses the idea of the prompt. Ah well, I'm on my own this time.
So... I took the idea of the secrets from the machines as my theme and basically decided to have the machines narrate the poem and go through and answer the questions. I decided to alternate and have the born (me) tell parts of the story too. I copy/pasted the questions in a notepad and wrote a stanza from each of them. Found as I went that it was harder to answer the questions from the machines' point of view than I thought. So I wrote it like a conversation between me and the machines.
I started just answering the questions in the order that they were in the prompt but then realized that "What stories came from the spilled blood?" and "What lover's name came riding out on your first breath?" should probably be in the beginning of the poem. Then came the part where I had to find a way to END the thing. GAH! The hardest part sometimes. I think I did OK after a bit more shuffling of sections.
Voila! Another poem is born.
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