All in by Therese Gleason
by Therese Gleason
This is for the twin hinge,
hardest of bony workers,
gatekeeper of body and mind,
guardian of the toothed cave,
vestibule for breath and sustenance.
Puppeteer behind the scenes,
you crank the red drawbridge
open and closed, sheriff of the mouth,
keeper of speech, teacher of suck
and kiss, clamp with damp lips.
Is it any wonder you yawn
and ache? You are Sisyphus
of swallowing, Atlas of the mouth’s
gummed palate, tamer of muscular
tongue and teeth. You are chewer
of words and meat, mandible
and maxilla in a marriage
of opposites, chomping till death
do you part: holy equation of catch
and release. You are holder of tension,
detritus of language and emotion
ground down by the tectonics
of the molar ridge. Tender buttons,
jointed joist of bone on bone,
clenched or unseated in sleep
you rouse the three-headed dragon,
trigeminal and terrible, to unleash
a shower of darts shimmering
from eye socket to cheek.
O simple machine, mother
who feeds, domed cathedral
of human want and need. O
sacred portal that falls open
at rest when the soul
is released.
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Therese Gleason is author of two chapbooks: Libation (co-winner, South Carolina Poetry Initiative competition, 2006) and Matrilineal (Finishing Line, 2021). Her poems appear/are forthcoming in 32 Poems, Indiana Review, Rattle, New Ohio Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, America, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Literary Mama, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, KY, she lives in Worcester, MA with her spouse and three children. A literacy teacher at an elementary school, Therese reads for The Worcester Review and has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. Find her at theresegleason.com.
by Therese Gleason
The abdominoplasty scar bisects my body: thin red equator feathery at my hips,
mottled rope above the pubic bone. Before motherhood, the world of my belly
was flat, a blank page. Now, its vellum is etched with ancient cartography:
scrawled stretch marks, evidence of the body’s wisdom—joints cranked open, sinew
softened, cartilage and bone expanding, ribs and pelvis making way for one, two,
three souls to grow in a saltwater globe, faces pressing the womb’s porthole.
My first, a girl, measured ten pounds on the ultrasound, just shy of nine at birth.
I cried when I heard c-section—what about my doula, prenatal yoga, marathoner’s
endurance, migraineur’s pain tolerance? My midwife great-great-grandmother
who, having borne eleven children, assisted the country doctor at her neighbors’
home births? My own mother, who delivered my sister and me, footling breech
twins, with no anesthesia? I wanted to surrender to instinct, the primal power
of the birthing body—but my cervix refused to dilate past a fingertip, my firstborn’s
head too large to pass narrow, novice hips. Three years later, I submitted to the scalpel
again: boy/girl twins who disintegrated my abdominal fascia, its gossamer no match
for two amniotic sacs, placentas, humans. After, my guts protruded through a ravine
between the rectus abdominis, bellybutton punched out. At the postpartum checkup,
baby feet poking the tender cavity of my deflated torso, the doctor said I can palpate
your aorta and your viscera have no protection. It made sense, this defenseless
underbelly, love having blown me wide open at my prime meridian—at times I wanted
to tuck my children back inside for safe-keeping but a mother can’t live with an abyss
at her core. So the surgeon sliced my belly hip to hip, tenting the flap of skin
to stitch me stem to sternum along the linea alba, fixing the umbilical hernia, sucking
fat from flanks, trimming a hemline of excess tissue and puncturing a button hole
for my newly crooked navel. For ten days, drains at my groin siphoned honey-colored fluid;
for four weeks I hunched like a crone; for more than a month I couldn’t cradle my babies’
sweet heft or cuddle my toddler, my thrice-cut incision bandaged and weeping,
but O blessed be my stomach’s scarred art, fleshy omphalos that parted
for three blood-streaked heads to dawn.
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Therese Gleason, a Pushcart nominee, is author of Libation (2006), co-winner of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative’s Chapbook Competition. Her work has recently appeared/is forthcoming in The Worcester Review, America, New Ohio Review, San Pedro River Review, Literary Mama, Psaltery & Lyre, Halfway Down the Stairs, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Mass Poetry’s “Hard Work of Hope/Poem of the Moment” Series. A literacy teacher, she lives with her husband and three children in Worcester, MA.
