Sasha Steensen is the author of four books of poetry: House of Deer (Fence Books), A Magic Book (Fence Books), The Method (Fence Books), and Gatherest, forthcoming from Ahsahta Press. She has published several essays, including Openings: Into Our Vertical Cosmos, which can be read at Essay Press (http://www.essaypress.org). She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she tends chickens, goats, a barn cat, a bearded dragon, a standard poodle and two children. She serves as a poetry editor for Colorado Review and teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Colorado State University.
14.
I am trying to remember where I am
in time. Magna Mater giving birth on her throne.
Not supine and somehow between the known
and the unknown. That’s where a baby, not yet breathing,
exists, on the verge of what we call being.
I look between my legs and see the bloody sheet.
Had we known now what we did then, our birthing
might have been upright and almost a relief.
Inexplicably, I think a thought I’ll never need:
kills is the Dutch word for creek. That’s not a thought,
I think. That’s me seeing her breathe.