Katie Hartsock
Pregnant Ninja
When I realized our firstborn would arrive in the first full month
of the new administration, we had just watched A Touch of Zen.
Several scenes after the best warrior ninja-bounces over village
walls and through forest canopies like a slow-motion jackalope and
slaughters reams of the evil regime’s soldiers, it becomes clear she
was pregnant in battle. So much incredulity in those days. And no l
ying down for her. Later, when I saw my mucous plug slowly
sliding down the toilet’s throat in such silent expert movement, I
wrote a poem called “Pregnant Ninja” and tried to pour my anger
and joy into it. And a few little items of praise, like how the
pregnancy gave me dreams ending in real and often loud orgasms,
when all I had done was some simple thing like press a potted peace
lily against myself or ride bareback a running velociraptor.
Sinuously, very sinuously, we rode. But the little lyric could not
accommodate my anger, which appeared at the end so fast the
poem became incredulous of itself. And who wants to read that.
We have a book with a picture of a jackalope and my son, born in
but not of this administration, points at the bearded antlered thing
and says, “Pretty, pretty.” 37 weeks now with the second to be born
and I’m keeping watch for the mucous plug, hoping to see it
bounce down again. I’m thinking of that poem I had to let go, the
ending that wasn’t right, that needed the devils roaming earth up
and down to know there’s a heavy, very heavy, plan in the works
which I am meant to help execute.
Katie Hartsock is the author of Bed of Impatiens (Able Muse Press, 2016), a finalist for the 2017 Ohioana Award in poetry. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Ecotone, Exchanges, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, and The Wallace Stevens Journal, among others. She holds a MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Comparative Literary Studies from Northwestern University. She is an assistant professor of English at Oakland University in Michigan.
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