Jo Brachman: “Adoption, Second Day”
ADOPTION, SECOND DAY
Your eight-month-old weight
on my chest tethered me to the bed.
Each time your tongue pushed against
your gums, I felt your jaw moving.
Like shards of some ancient Peruvian
lineage, buried teeth cutting through flesh.
Your throat vibrated, not like the future
morning, when you’d laugh outright,
but a purple-throated bird of late
afternoon pulsing my sternum with a song.
Suddenly startled, quick flex of knees,
clenched hands. Followed by an exhale
of relief. Your nape muscles relaxed.
Your arms released their shield.
Vertebrae loosened, legs lengthened.
You became your true size.
A string of drool slid down your chin,
dampening my shirt. And as if you were mine,
my lips touched your fontanel, and I inhaled
your scent and inhaled your scent again,
and I wondered—in that other place
what had you heard, what had you seen?
I didn’t even know your name,
but I knew you were the one.
And all this time the miraculous chamber
of your chest continued to pump blood
out to the edges of your ten fingers, ten toes.
And it came to me—you were becoming
mine, and I was becoming yours.
All I had to do at that moment
was breathe, and listen to you breathe,
and you kept breathing.
Jo Brachman’s Prayers to a Small Stone won the 2024 Cider Press Review Book Award. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Best New Poets, Cimarron Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Poet Lore, among others. A recipient of the Fulbright (2022), Brachman’s research at Lund University (Sweden) focused on the Witnessing Genocide archives concerning the German concentration camp, Ravensbrück, built specifically for the incarceration of women. Her current research encompasses the lives and the writings of the women who were interned there. Her poetry translations can be found in Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation.