by Marion Brown

Night blots out the Olympic
Range. My daughter and I
make do with what might be

Cassiopeia. I’ve crossed an ice-
locked continent to lean my leg
on hers, to gaze into nightfall 

before I sleep. She cradles
a laptop. A Libra, she weighs
what she reads: fetal cells

get left behind. Not a foreign
tourist, a fetus hangs on.
The alien never goes home.

She and I both harbor some
exotic code.  Looking out,
primed for a far-off message,

my daughter does not name
the heartbeat that stopped.
I know a few specifics

but not the one to wean her
from love. (Press a torn
aloe leaf against the burn.) 

I, too, squint and peer,
taking in stars far away
or long gone out. In my

solar system, daughter cells
must be orbiting moons
too close for me to see.

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A Yonkers resident, Marion Brown holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College and Ph.D. from Columbia University. Finishing Line Press published her chapbooks Tasted and The Morning After Summer. Her poem “In the Dock, Fagin Reflects” won the Portico Poetry Competition. Other poems have appeared in Guesthouse, the Women’s Review of Books, Kestrel, The Night Heron Barks, and DIAGRAM. She serves on the Advisory Committee of Slapering Hol Press and Graywolf’s National Council.