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Claudia Putnam lives in Colorado and is the terrified, inspired, and otherwise utterly humbled mother of Julian, an emerging young man. She is also the still-thunderstruck mother of Jacob, who died as a baby eighteen years ago. Her writing appears online at Facets and Switched-on Gutenberg, as well as in print in Penumbra, Flint Hills Review, Roanoke Review, Rock & Sling, MARGIE, RHINO, Cimarron Review, Artful Dodge, and elsewhere.
More from Claudia Putnam
Poetry Archives
Never
By Claudia Putnam
June 20, 2007
A mother should never
let her baby die. He should always
wear a little cap; it is her job
to keep him warm.
A dead child is beyond
the bounds of fleecy
pajamas, and so the mother
is always anxious.
It is wrong to leave a child
unfed. A dead child
is doomed to want. To want
back in, Peter Pan
at the window, watching
the mother with her new child.
And even as she dresses
and suckles the living,
the mother feels the dead
child's want, mirror
to her own. Her breasts will never
be emptied.
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