Postpartum Poems | Examples

My Mother's Child

You can never be ready, she said
I wasn't what you expected.
Listen,
No one told me "postpartum depression"
Until I saw you in the kitchen
With my baby sister at your feet,
White hot tears,
A savage grief,
Out of nowhere.
I was told to go play with my dolls.
Listen,
I thought it was my fault,
So I hid in my dark closet.
Listen,
When you couldn't care for us
I watched for you each day
With blue-brown eyes, mix of two loves,
Seeing your ghost,
The shadow of your blue coat,
In the window,
In the swirling, aching, endless snow
At the edge of winter.
Listen.
I am forever my mother's child.

the real heroes

Everyone loves a new mother.
We give her pampering gifts.
Send her carnations and roses.
Promise her candles, warm baths, chocolates.
Tromp into the hospital bearing onesies with cute sayings.
Pretending the smell of urine is palatable.
Pretending to not hear the cat whines from the new hairless creature.
Lying about the baby’s cuteness, feeling it is more hideous than pretty.
When postpartum blues hit, and the loudest wailing begins.
When deep pain, anguish and depression filter into the house
Who stays to help?
These are the heroes.

The Working Mom

I would move mountains for all the working mothers:
To untangle our communities and have someone see their true colors. 
To stop mothers from carrying the brunt of communal dysfunction,
To guide a little cultural deconstruction,
To redirect the debilitating parental judgment,
To provide more support from the government,
To end the overstimulated etiquettes that have always been known, 
To deconstruct those parenting standards we’ve outgrown,
To assist with the impossible parenting choices,
To hear these working mothers' voices.
To help homes stay financially viable,
To create childcare that is reliable,
To become a work-life balance advocate, 
To build postpartum support that's adequate,
To support the countless and endless asks,
To end the pressure of the myriad of household tasks.
To stop being accustomed to survival mode.
It's time to start enjoying the motherly road,
Because the weight of being someone’s everything is as heavy as it is light,
Moving Mountains for them seems right.

Don'T Be Upset, Mommy

Mommy, don't be upset
When they say how you should stand, sit and eat 
While I munch on your blood and meat.

Just don't be upset
When they advise you on when I should be fed.
You alone know when my tummy needs bread

Mommy, don't be upset
When they say I was born lean or bulky, dark or fair
And force home remedies and weird aftercare

Just don't be upset
When they judge you for the cuts on your belly
Or the amount of milk generated by your body.

Don't be upset
When they rebuke you for keeping me on diapers
Or nag about your choices right from mittens to rompers. 

I know how you guarded me for nine months
Every time I kicked from inside, your heart went nuts
When my poor latching has hurt your nipples, 
I felt the wetness of your tears on my nerves.

We ate and slept together
We screamed and sang together
I was in your belly and you were in my blood
To meet each other, we worked as a team and laboured. 

Now, who are they to make you feel low? 
No, whatever they say doesn't help us grow.
Just don't be upset, Mommy. 
We'll do only that, what is best for us!

I Have No Time

I have no time Melinda argues
You need to take time for you, we tell her.
I am way to busy! She shrieks.
She is on her own last nerve.
We see it.

One aunt says she will watch the two-year-old twins.
A great-grandma offers to take the new baby home for the day.
Grandma wants to do her laundry.
We are all rebuffed.
Melinda is the only one who can do any of that.
She is frazzled, frenzied, and frantic.

We have seen postpartum before.
You really need to take some time for yourself we tell her.
A doctor’s visit might be in the works.
I am too busy!  Melinda argues. “I cannot see a doctor!”
We are at a loss.
We cannot force a grown woman to take time for herself.
To relax, take a bath, play soft music.
Sadly, her entire family is suffering now.

Rollback Paradise

Enjoying
thinking about switching
computer keep attention
to the sink for postpartum
poltergeist style
8:00 surcharge forum

Olympiad 1-4-79

As the Dime Store sirens flared
bolts of irradiated invite,
my query was denied.
     Their pimp-striped pilots only moaned, 
     their lust fueled by encapsulated 
     stench carried only by toothless carnies 
     from the canyons. Canyons o’ Crazed Confliction. 
     And behind… the  dull dynamo hum.

I screamed for the Kelp Queen to come to me, 
her tresses woven wave-like in the wabe. 
My demands were simple. 
     The scars of the trucker's she must carry 
     (as war carries death) 
     for inbreeding has tainted her line.
     “Can Omaha be far?” she pleaded 
      and tugged at my inter-ache 

as tin balloons tug with time .   
“For you?” I replied in a 
flatulent belch.
     The boiling madness was by now 
     beyond the horizon but  kept in check
     still by the neon dogs crouching by day under the interchange.
     It is they who will now stalk the disease plagued ports 
     I sailed from so many 
                    days
                    and
                    images
                    ago.
 
Until her kleptic crew of vagrants and priests
sprint with me in postpartum harmony. 
Hipsters for TRUTH.

Covid-19 Emotions

for Charlotte:  stuck in 
circles, bars, postpartum woes
yellow wallpaper

5 Decades, a Dozen Lifetimes

Born into an ordinary, churchgoing family
No one expected Satan to reign supreme
Relapse and rehab and sobriety chips
Postpartum vacations in the psych ward’s west wing
Three decades of life, aged twice as much
Finally lulled into domestic bliss
The wild can never truly be tamed
Excitement and fire I missed
Turned my passion of life toward writing instead
Cause 50 years old is too young to be dead


Sponsor: Silent One
Contest: Story of My Life in Ten Lines
Date: 9/30/19

The Way Down

Perpetual posturing
Stuck anchored down by the positioning of a perfect picture
A perfect picture with no permission to persist
Descending to this consumption 
Piss and vinegar in a pill capsule to portray the presumption
Of a petulant peasant painted in peer-pressure
Puppeteering the pendulum of a parent in postpartum
Part of the play
This pig patronized in pestilence 
Penance awarded by the penetration in post mortem 
Part of the play, it is
This is the way down

The Chicken Crossed the Road Or Did It

The Chicken Crossed the Road or Did It

For centuries mankind has explored the reason why
The chicken crossed the road
They could not be satisfied, oh no
With the question that came first; what came first?
The chicken or the egg?
I guess we are cursed to analyze this one for eternity
Here are some other ideas to fathom for free;
The chicken crossed half the road
The other part was not to be
As the road to success is always under construction
The chicken was busy being born and busy dying
So it walked away crying
It became bored,tired, suicidal waiting for a bus
It went looking for a truck  
It crossed to escape tyranny and other silly things
It got lost with the fog…or frog…. whatever came to be
It crossed the road solely to return
To confuse us… Was it coming or going?
There is substantial supportive evidence to suggest
It was suffering from postpartum direction 
The chicken crossed the road, according to reliable sources
Other sources stated and reported
The road crossed it
I wonder what’s for dinner?
Chicken of course

Capitol Offense

The White House is on a great lot
It's Washington's drive to it spot
But guards only train
That terror's to contain
So mentally ill there get shot


Author's note:  The new treatment for postpartum depression is now a firing squad.

Haltering

A red clock and the dwarf
will not meet on the wall.
Time slips out in virginal shyness.

On the verge of collapse was
an ossified civil group
after emotive conception fails.

Unambiguously an azure
sky measures the human steps
in somnambulant thoughts.

You throw a bound kid
in a water tank, after postpartum blues
and walk away with a halter.

Who will grab the fractured
age, during the fire dance?
A mirror lies flat after announcing the award.


Satish Verma

Prologue To a Next Life

He would never forget the raindrops knocking on his coffin,
painfully screaming in a postpartum (from life) depression, 
nor would he forget the stiffness of his entire body 
banging on the wood as the carriage was hurried
 along the cracked pavement on the streets 
of the Holy Land to the cheapest and closest "Ash House".
He had never imagined what the future would bring to him,
 now, when the latest experience in physical death 
had been caused by simply the absolute lack of love.
He didn't react too much to the beatings and mutilations of the hysterical fat maniacs, 
self-proclaimed highnesses in control of a whole degenerated generation. 
He still remembered though the permanent hunger of the soul 
and the love he had never experienced.
Adnan was not a fighter anymore.
It was time to move on and die for a while...
But then... 

for Gareth's Contest: "Leave Me Hanging"

www.scripca.com

Postpartum

Tis a cruel twist of fate
When in love a child is born;
What once was love becomes hate
When fruit of union she doth scorn.

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