First Day
Alicia Rebecca Myers
My son was nine days late. It took
the threat of induction to convince him
to leave my carriage. Now, with limbs
like umbels, he bears his own
bloom. Fingertips stained dark
from blueberries, he decamps
at a clip, weaves between September
bees on his way to a place that isn’t
pear-shaped. Last summer, we posed
with our heads emerging from behind
stolen marble torsos. The body that was
my body, suddenly this other.
Alicia Rebecca Myers's poetry has appeared in publications that include River Styx and Sixth Finch. Her chapbook of poems, My Seaborgium (Brain Mill Press, 2016), was winner of the Mineral Point Chapbook Series. Her first full-length manuscript, Warble, was recently chosen by former Kansas Poet Laureate Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg as winner of the 2024 Birdy Poetry Prize (Meadowlark Press) and will be published in 2025.