that new baby smell

following hospital orders / we don’t bathe you / for weeks / until
/   your   umbilical   cord   stump  /  atrophies   naturally  /   once
tumescent white / maggot-like / clamped life convulsing / to  a
still / now shed snakeskin / shriveled  translucent / ruby-russet
sinewed blood-innards / dried dead / how  many  hands  / have
caressed / your silken hair / burrowed noses / into your petaline
scalp / inhaled your scent / swallowing / that new  baby  smell  /
of    lanugo,    vernix,   and    lochia    clots,    vaginal    discharge, 
meconium, amniotic fluid of hormones,  antibodies and  urine,
 vomit,   excrement,  sloughed  uterine  tissue,  effaced  cervical
 membrane, congealed  crimson-ochre  remnants  of  dislodged
mucus plug remains, all those compartmentalized constrained
and criminalized waters of detest-desired  woman as  creature, 
yes—they sigh—you wish you could bottle it, right?



nucleus

skins 
scar-tissued  
nipple 
once broken
in
tears fresh
rind

red raw

flesh flayed
affixed on fanged 
tongues
asphyxiating all 
air, milk, blood 
flow from the
shiver-blanched
grip of your
toothless jaws

piercing
 
my nipple, needled
through its breast
abraded nerve-thread
knife-taut and 
fraying

you resist
hour-fragile 
sustenance, with
century-acute
cries, clawing 
you thrash, roar
your purpling
throats back
reject 

survival

i fight you 
back, and
back, and 
back, offer
pinched pinpricks
of milk, from vein
strung dendrites
and axon limbs 
dilapidating disc-less
you clench, unclench
impale and 
disgorge

blood reservoirs 

sungold glinted
center the needled 
nipple’s eye
reflecting yours 
skyward

pleading

clarity of fire
agate and amber
river-rippled water
surface ripped 
frantic with howling
hunger

i have lived 
the last 
four years
either pregnant
miscarrying
postpartum
or breastfeeding
  
healing 
skin to break
it in, again

discharged with
my heart 
shaped placenta 
and prescribed plastic
nipple shields
instructed to separate
your skin 
from the skin 
who made it

i, bourgeon of 
mitochondrial bloom
unbordering your cells
to bud bones, stem
viscera, blossom
myelin and
muscle 

advised to
nurse, belly to 
belly, breast to
breast, skin 
to skin, yet
artificially sever
my astral areolas
from your 
landlocked lips

now 
i am losing
this war 
amassing and eroding
layered wounds in
legions of tectonic
pus and blood-crusted
calluses, sloughing 
scabs

forever
mothering
forever 
weaning 

after germinating
gestating, umbilically 
amputating
you 

i am left 
anchored towards 
your waning suns
as your waters 
tide 
from the pull
of mine

how not to 
internalize this
pain as nourishment?
as necessary?
biological?

inferior?

can my own 
ancestral 
skin
touching my own
breast 
grow my own 
nipple 
large enough 
to stimulate 
the canopies 
of your mouths
stoma?

hands full of 
your head, weak 
wave of undulant
neck and kelp-hair
my thumb presses
your seashell ears
all my extremities
ache with 
the weight of 
your cradling

screaming
you sear this
earth mound 
of breast
root stump
of nipple

sink a slicing 
stab into me
siphon life from
my milk-sluiced
synapses

welcome 
this pain 
through

gasped breath
gnashed teeth

fight instinct
to carve nails 
into napes of
meadowed necks
or crush fontanelles 
of your forehead
wetlands

instead i harbor 
your heads 
in my hands 
numb with
neuropathy
so mine can 
remember these

lines 

bodies, words
and their
ephemeral

excisions

Fuguesong
supplesoft rosybeige skin
smooth of an unbruised
 magnolia  

greybrown stone eyes 
blossoming from the bottom 
of a jadeblue river

soft of your headmoss

hair of feathers, 
your eyelashes, dandelion wishes windblown 

landscaped knees and elbows  
flesh ridges, ravines,
dimple your cheekclouds

finger and toe anemones 
animate seashell nails

all of you, my boneflesh,
my bloodmilk heart

dis/embodied.





Starved to the point of 
vertigo, migraine, nausea,
on an unpaid meal break
I’m cramped, stifling in
my car, sweat rupturing 
my skin, too shamed to 
roll the windows down, 
a fatigued eye twitches as
an animal alphabeted cloth
falls from the bra I struggle
to unhook, a strained sore
muscle pulls my neck, 
as the pump drips, I
set a timer, and after
20 minutes of milking 
myself, the woman animal
I am, goes back to serving
other’s food and drinks 
for minimum wage, 
my body perfumed by
the sour smell of
my own sweet
blood milk.





This           is   motherhood.





Alchemist of life, out of damn all depletion. I subsist
in negative time, permanently halved from you, from 
my past self, disfigured by this ache of semblance,  
missing both at the same time, and for the rest of 
my life. Waiting hours to exhale, when at last you sleep, 
once desperate for respite, I can only scan: your new
born photographs, your breath on the monitor, the
day’s firsts becoming memories, your slitted red teeth
marks, indented parentheses scarring my aureolas 
with (the reduction of) my pain, (incidental). It’s 3AM 
and I’ve finished today’s siphoning and extraction, 
cleaning the floor of hazards, laundry, diapers, sanitizing
 bottles, your meal prep for tomorrow: 2 veggies, 2 fruits,
1 protein, 1 grain, 1 healthy fat per meal, 3 meals a day.
I collapse on the couch, my own hunger an inconvenience, 
so I eat poetry on deadline. Sleep is a muse I can never 
attain, my body a deprived animal, frenzied from 
chronic survival, in desperation to sustain, yours.





how waking, you birdsong joy,
tailspinning headfirst to
face each day, and mine

how you language sound, 
syllables blown in bubbles
between smacking lips and 
your tongue, clicking baby teeth

how you stop time when 
your magnetic hand hovers
before my face, your eyes 
imploring mine as if to ask 
if I am real, you are real?

how you love to cognize,
dancing between sunlight
and shadow, as wind sings
to the leaves and you, 
you are here, you are here
	you are		 so happy 
to be		    here










About the author:





Celeste Colarič-Gonzales (she/her) writes/arts/mothers in Oakland, CA on unceded Chochenyo Ohlone land. A dual M(F)A candidate at SFSU, she’s the recipient of several awards, including the Marcus Fellowship. When not wording, she paints, does old-school photography, or otherwise crafts. Find her words+ in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Blood Orange Review, NELLE, The Ana, Corporeal, Cosmic Daffodil,Woodcrest, and Transfer Magazine, where she’s served as Poetry Editor and EIC.





Feature image by ilham saputra on Unsplash