Pregnant with you, touring the CICU,
I tilted earthward, and the nurses rose
above me like cold lifting waves.
Blind to the row of screens singing
about children in lilting waves,
half-hearted children in wire and tube.
In half-light through drawn blinds,
they lay like gods, in nests of machine,
hearts stitched with wire, the throat a tube,
a door left open to an empty room.
My god was the machine, a nest pregnant
with you. I didn’t know but my body knew.
Fainting Spell
Renee Emerson is the author of the poetry collections Keeping Me Still (Winter Goose Publishing 2014), Threshing Floor (Jacar Press 2016), and Church Ladies (Fernwood Press, forthcoming 2022). She is also the author of the chapbook The Commonplace Misfortunes of Everyday Plants (Belle Point Press, forthcoming). She lives in the Midwest with her husband and children.