ON NOT HAVING A BABY
Paola Ferrante’s poetry and fiction have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, CV2, Joyland, Room Magazine, Carte Blanche, Canthius, Minola Review, Overland, and elsewhere. Her poetry was a finalist for The Malahat Review’s 2019 Open Season Awards, nominated for the 2018 Best of the Net award, and longlisted for the 2017 Thomas Morton Memorial Prize. Her fiction won first prize in Room Magazine’s 2018 Fiction Awards, was shortlisted for PRISM International’s 2018 Grouse Grind, and was longlisted for SmokeLong Quarterly’s 15 anniversary Flash Fiction Award. Her chapbook, The True Confessions of Buffalo Bill, was published by Anstruther Press. This poem is a part of her first full-length poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attack, which is forthcoming from Mansfield Press in Spring 2019. She resides in Toronto, Canada.
Crayons aren’t eco-friendly;
there’s no colony on Mars.
The end, according to the Mayans,
was supposed to start on Sunday.
Still we’re due in 2026. At night,
I lie awake expecting
bomb threats in Hawaii, rising
levels of alerts, or of estrogen
in fish. False alarm. Be rational,
you say. If it happens, it happens.
There is no Punnett square to determine
whether my alleles, if wrong
can ever make a right,
the chances of expressing
phenotypic probability,
mother’s tendencies to cut
her fingers, pick up every piece
of glass along the sidewalk,
still terrified somehow
of a sliver in a bottle,
the damage to stray dogs.
If you keep on breaking
strong glass, eventually
you get sand.
The smallest fraction,
broken further, in theory the distance
between her and me gets infinitely
small, while never being reached.
No one tries this with Russian roulette.
Be rational. Why take the chance
dividing two by two, my daughter
will not get my teeth
my bark, my bite,
just the loss
of expecting
sleep.
Paola Ferrante’s poetry and fiction have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Puritan, The Fiddlehead, CV2, Joyland, Room Magazine, Carte Blanche, Canthius, Minola Review, Overland, and elsewhere. Her poetry was a finalist for The Malahat Review’s 2019 Open Season Awards, nominated for the 2018 Best of the Net award, and longlisted for the 2017 Thomas Morton Memorial Prize. Her fiction won first prize in Room Magazine’s 2018 Fiction Awards, was shortlisted for PRISM International’s 2018 Grouse Grind, and was longlisted for SmokeLong Quarterly’s 15 anniversary Flash Fiction Award. Her chapbook, The True Confessions of Buffalo Bill, was published by Anstruther Press. This poem is a part of her first full-length poetry collection, What to Wear When Surviving A Lion Attack, which is forthcoming from Mansfield Press in Spring 2019. She resides in Toronto, Canada.