The New Stranger<\/b>
\nby Sharon Olds (from Blood, Tin, Straw<\/i>)<\/p>\n
They would peer in the carriage and ask was your father
\nChinese, your lustrous, curly-lidded,
\nslightly tilted eyes, your elegant
\nforehead. You were a stranger to me\u2014
\nI thought I would know you, but I had to get to know you\u2014
\nI know your bowl brow, and serious
\neyes, but sometimes you were alien to me
\nas a foetus, the large-brained head, the brain
\nforming its ancient folded flower
\nlike a vegetable, you could not talk,
\nyou looked at me as if from far
\naway, Mars, the newt, I did not
\nknow you, I had never known a newborn, you
\nhad to arrive into the arms of an amateur.
\nNo one has known my ignorance so well, so
\nsmelled my fear, there, with the fresh
\nabundant milk. And from no one have I learned
\n as I learned from you, you brought me forward
\nfrom brine and kelp and alkali
\nthrough mitosis, meiosis, zygote, delicate
\nblastocoele, with your eyes I swam up
\nfrom deep in your face, with your lips I opened,
\nwith your tongue I formed your name, with the stub of your
\nhand I budded, with your baby-fat
\nI put on cells, with your brown, swirling
\ncrown I crowned, with your life I came forth,
\nand a moment later, rose-blue, you opened
\nthe new package of your breath. I looked
\nup, and saw you. Hard to tell,
\nin those first moments on the delivery table,
\ngore, and cord, and packet of gore,
\nwho has hooked whom\u2014you caught me
\ninto the human. I learned to sit still while you
\nhauled that whale of milk tail-first down
\nout of me\u2014split, fiery
\nflukes of your first sips\u2014I learned to be
\nnuzzled as they might cuddle an autistic child. I learned to croon to you,
\nto cry and moan, and all this time
\nyou were getting your first looks at the earth, it was
\nyou<\/i>, and I did not know you, I was not
\nthere to greet you, I didn’t exist
\nuntil you smiled at me, and in your
\nbrilliant loam-colored iris I saw,
\ntiny as an embryo,
\nyour mother smile. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The New Stranger by Sharon Olds (from Blood, Tin, Straw) They would peer in the carriage and ask was your father Chinese, your lustrous, curly-lidded, slightly tilted eyes, your elegant forehead. You were a stranger to me\u2014 I thought I would know you, but I had to get to know you\u2014 I know your bowl brow, and serious eyes, but sometimes you were alien to me as a foetus, the large-brained head, the brain forming… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[234],"tags":[1052,2211,1053],"class_list":["post-2403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-mothers-day","tag-poetry","tag-sharon-olds"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1jWWl-CL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}