Rachel Marie Patterson: “Long Weekend”
LONG WEEKEND
At the beach, the baby goes blotchy,
refuses the bottle, won’t be held—
head suddenly hot, her hair, her hands
curled to clasping and her cries
inconsolable. I race, guilt-ridden,
to Rite-Aid for cherry Tylenol.
Crisis now familiar—no plan safe
with a sickly toddler. Hours from home,
in a hazardous house on stilts,
I nurse her through the night.
I never knew that mother meant terror,
meant mourning. In the morning, sores
surface on the soles of her feet.
Rachel Marie Patterson is the co-founder and editor of Radar Poetry. Her poems appear in Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, New Plains Review, Forklift, Ohio, The Journal, Thrush, Parcel, Smartish Pace, and other journals. Tall Grass With Violence, her first full-length collection, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.