洞月亮 Cave Moon Press November 2019

FEATURED POET:  Mona Theresa Lydon-Rochelle grew up in Scituate, Massachusetts. She received her PhD from the University of Washington and was a professor at the University of Washington and University of College Cork. She has worked as a midwife nationally and internationally; an epidemiologist for Médecins Sans Frontières; and editor and peer-reviewed for numerous journals.  Her first poetry chapbook was Mourning Dove. Her latest work is On the Brink of the Sea from Cave Moon Press.

Miraculous Water Birth of Jésus

         I want the word
of women’s plight,
word upon word,
poem upon poem,
pronounced.
          August warms
Libya’s coast, winds blowing
off the Mediterranean Sea.
Fawn-eyed women mewl
in pain—prison walls echoing.
Guards’ guns sodomize.
Women bleed rivulets.
One escapes. And in a boat
on lemon water, sun-blessed
dolphins breach
as life throbs in her
refugeed womb.
            No midwife hands.
Burning sun, brine-soaked
lips. Wracked,
weary, worn. And then,
the sea went mute,
as the child was born.
The mother wakes to rescuers:
A Senegalese man I didn’t know
held my hand and wrapped my baby
in a scarf. I named him Jésus.
These words sound like a miracle,
like Jesus walking on water.

Copts of Egypt

Christians flee from villages like the Jews before them,
sorrowful. Hatred was, is, will be. Blood and debris.

And the children? In the rubble?

A tent tattered blue. A woman, cold as a stone,
weeps in her cot. Love turned sorrowful.

And the children? In the rubble?

In the monastery pilgrims pray, ‘Lord forgive them.’
Icons of malachite and verdigris watch sorrowfully.


And the children? In the rubble.


WRITE YOUR POEM!

And the children? In the rubble?  
The question becomes for your poem, how do you use punctuation?  It's a huge subject, but note how Mona uses the questions to face the reader and develop the irony, just with changing the punctuation of her lead/chant form she utilizes in this poem.  Ask your question.  Write your poem!