Parenthood, Unplanned–Peggy Shumaker

When a jasmine-scented
teenager (not yet my mother)

came up pregnant
with me, my father

stepped up.
They did what teenagers did

in 1951.  Married.
Mismatched

spectacularly–
fifteen years of yelling and beer.

Four kids and two
miscarriages

before she turned
twenty-four.

No education
past high school.

So after the divorce,
crap jobs,

crappier men,
government cheese,

no sleep.
Haunted, her eyes.

There are men
making decisions

right now
about lives of girls

and women.
Some do not want

children to know
how their bodies work.

Some do not trust
women to make

decisions.  As if
women were people,

as if women
know what’s best

for their lives,
for the lives

of their children.
That broken teen

who carried me, who
pushed me out

into this world,
that brilliant

ragged girl
died young, worn down

in her thirties.
One small life,

I know.  The only life
she had.  I speak for her

when I say
Let women live.

Let women be.

 

This poem was first published in Cutthroat:  Truth to Power Special Issue and also opens Shumaker’s latest collection, Cairn.