Nancy Scott McBride’s most recent poem to appear here was “Cain” (August 2017)

The Mouths of Children
By Nancy Scott McBride

They work so hard at words,
those round-whistle mouths
that are always open for bread
and breath and milk and mom.

An old lady now, I still see them as
open holes I must fill,
open wounds I must tend,
their thumbs only temporary solace.

I’m bound by their birth cries,
by the sounds that come from their
rose-bud mouths, the hold me /
help me / love me sounds.

l feel compelled to answer them,
the neighbor’s children,
the stranger’s children,
the refugee children in the news.

A baby cries in the canned-goods
aisle of the local supermarket.
I look around trying to locate it,
my dry breasts tingling.