Poetry 15: Amy Lemmon

I don't know anything about Amy Lemmon. I discovered her because my teacher tossed me a book and said, "Here, you'll like this." And I do. (If you'd like to check it out, you can buy it here.)

This poem was nominated for a Pushcart prize. I feel like I'm OK printing it all because it appears here. And you can read Amy's blog here. I hope you're able to appreciate how cool the format is for this particular subject. (Sorry, I didn't need to point out the obvious to YOU astute readers, right?)

As most of you know, I have a dear friend who went through this experience herself. Needless to say, this poem, and several others in the book, speak especially well to her.

I apologize for the periods. I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how to keep columns, or tabs, or even a table in a blogger document and nothing worked. (Anyone want to teach me?) So I've used periods to keep her spacing right. Ignore them. The real poem appears in three neat columns.

Karyotype
by Amy Lemmon

What would ...........it look like,
I wondered, ..........this map
of gene particles ....counted
and crossed? .........As we waited,
I imagined ...........a tidy grid
of lines .............and numbers,
stark spirals ........in red-green-blue,
anything but .........these tiny worms
photographed, ........magnified and ordered
in pairs except ......for the infamous
twenty-first: ........the error,
the glitch, ..........the wrench
in your infant .......clockwork. Striped
and annelidic, .......the chromosomes
weren’t even .........yours, just
a picture ............of someone
else’s, someone ......else’s child
who also had .........too much,
too many worms. ......picture
the other parents ....seeing these
squirming ..............for the first time ....squinting hard
like we do now. ......You’re here.
What do we ...........make of it?
.