He Asks How I Know I Want to be a Mother

By Arielle Kaplan

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I knew inside her     in my blue shell     girlbird waiting

for my egg tooth     to grow     she warmed me

her first clutch     her weft wormed my mouth

ropes of milk     of grandmother     great-grandmother

protein     mineral     moonroot    I was of her

my spine     her fingernails     her pores     my voice

her hair     seastring binding us     mussel & rock

I fledged     I feathered in the lee of her

I suckled at her skyblood     when I was born

I asked her     who would I be     she stood next to me

in the mirror     she showed me     our body

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Arielle Kaplan is a poet and educator from Philadelphia. She holds an MFA from Boston University, where she was the recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry. She is a member of AGNI’s editorial team and teaches writing in the Boston area. Her poetry has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bellevue Literary Review, Plume, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. Find her at ariellemkaplan.com.

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