Kelly's Child Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Kelly's Child



As soon as Alice died
She transmitted to her daughter
Her last recipe:
Barefooted,
Fertilized
Kelly lay sweating in bed.
She’d been a good Catholic,
Now look what it had done.
In the rented house,
With more mice than men,
The young lady had gotten pregnant,
But there was no air conditioning,
Just a screen door
Overlooking a rock garden
Where the dog had killed a rabbit.
Standing on the
Cinderblocks that made
The front steps,
Kelly looked into the dirt road
And waited for her
Husband to return from work.
She bit her lip,
And a fat toad farted
In the earth beside her slipper.
Inside the little house,
The kitchen lay in feverish shadow,
But floating in the east
The clouds were the
Nakedness of seashells,
And Kelly saw those and prayed.

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Robert Rorabeck

Robert Rorabeck

Berrien Springs
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