Ona Gritz

NO

The nurses shaped us into positions.
Cradle hold, football hold. My hands
couldn't take you to the right place.
Cerebral palsy I mumbled, apology,
explanation. As though those experts
of the body didn't already know.
Finally, they propped cushions around us.
Your lips touched my breast
but instead of suckling, you dozed.
This had the nurses worried.
I worried how I'd feed you alone.
That night, your wail woke me.
I scooped you up, found the nurse's bell.
When a new one came, I shyly
explained the pillows, the palsy.
"No," she said coolly and I stared.
"No. That baby needs sleep not milk"
I tried again: "he's hungry."
Shaking her head, she left our room.
I attempted the football hold.
The cradle. Tried setting up pillows
then sitting between them. They fell.
Keeping you in my arms, I paced, I sang.
We cried in unison, both of us
so helpless, so desperately new.

* * *

PROLOGUE

A beach block gets so quiet
with the season over,
the ocean louder.
Year-rounders grow restless.
Neighbors flirt and my father
who worked nights, the only man
around on those long afternoons.
Getting home later, missing supper,
spitting out words that made
my mother shut the window
against that salt, that cold.
You don't know where I been,
he'd bluster. You don't know
where I go--until she folded inside
where I was folded,
another unknown, forming.
She believed this caused
my cerebral palsy. Water
takes the shape of its container,
and we are mostly water.

Ona Gritz's poetry has been published in numerous online and print literary journals. In 2007, she won the Inglis House poetry contest and the Late Blooms Poetry Postcard competition. In 2009, she placed second for for Lilith Magazine's Charlotte Newberger Poetry Competition. Her chapbook of poems, Left Standing, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2005. Ona is also a children's author and columnist for the online journal, Literary Mama. She has been nominated for five Pushcart prizes.