Present Tense

Today I am my sister’s sister,
my father’s brow,
my mother’s squirm,
urging my spirit to light.

I touch my abdomen,
each daughters’ doorway
opened for a few fluorescent minutes
then sewn shut 
for good, if not for now.

I remain here, 
even when my form bruises, blooms,
or falls away, by way of what it does
or does not say.

Instead of saying It’s getting out of hand
won’t you say I need it in my hand
won’t you say
my hand

—a cardinal startles.
I do not mistake it for another red thing:
the flower on the soup bowl’s bottom
blurred by golden croutons.

With twitch of beak & eye,
the bird returns me to any tree,
a family.

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A recipient of a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Maya Pindyck is the author of two poetry books, Emoticoncert (2016, Four Way Books) and Friend Among Stones (2009, New Rivers Press, winner of the Many Voices Project Award). Her writing has recently appeared in Seneca Review, Barrow Street, and Quarterly West. She lives in Philadelphia where she is an assistant professor and director of Writing at Moore College of Art & Design.