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Stillbirth
by Kristine Ong Muslim
They used to choke
When I pressed them together,
Mashed bits of tender flesh
That were perfectly still
And vulnerable.They all look the same to me,
Floating like tiny shriveled
Tendrils of memories
Within glass jars.In that calm deathless sleep,
They cannot scream.
They are reduced into yielding
Artifacts oblivious to pain,
No longer vying for attention.If they can only see, then how will
Their malformed eyes adjust to the
Light?
So, once in a while, I poke pincers
Into those little eyes.And, just like before,
They do not mind the pain.
© Muslim, 2006
(First appeared in Star*Line Vol. 27, Issue 5,
September/October 2004)TO COMMENT ON THIS POEM CLICK HERE
Kristine Ong Muslim, a twenty-five year old writer living in the Philippines, has more than two-hundred stories and poems published/forthcoming in genre and
mainstream magazines and anthologies, which include Star*Line, Story House, The Pedestal Magazine, Wicked Hollow, Mythic Delirium, From the Asylum, Tales of the Talisman, Lighthouse VI, Flesh & Blood, Black Petals, Electric Velocipede, The Martian Wave, The Fifth Di, Dark Animus, Jupiter SF, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Not One of Us. She won Sam's Dot Publishing's 2004 James
Baker Award for genre poetry. Oddities, a chapbook collection of genre poems for children she co-wrote with Aurelio Rico Lopez III, is now available for sale
at Sam's Dot Publishing's The Genre Mall.