Rebecca Brock
At the Corn Maze, I Wait—
My body an old wound,
always healing. I am used
to waiting. My husband,
my youngest son, go
without looking back.
My firstborn—hesitates.
For a moment, he tends
toward me. But, yesterday,
he shouted, like a man:
I am a different person than you!
And I said, looking up at him,
like a fool: I know that, I know.
A mother knows everything.
And then, nothing.
I watch him enter the maze,
and then exit the entrance, twice,
before the sweet corn disappears him
and a hawk flicks up, golden,
against the mackerel sky,
and up, again, golden
as the corn, catching
light.
Rebecca Brock’s work appears in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest at The Comstock Review, the Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize and the Editor's Choice Award at Sheila-Na-Gig. The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2023) is her first collection. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccabrock.org.
Return to November 2023 Edition
My body an old wound,
always healing. I am used
to waiting. My husband,
my youngest son, go
without looking back.
My firstborn—hesitates.
For a moment, he tends
toward me. But, yesterday,
he shouted, like a man:
I am a different person than you!
And I said, looking up at him,
like a fool: I know that, I know.
A mother knows everything.
And then, nothing.
I watch him enter the maze,
and then exit the entrance, twice,
before the sweet corn disappears him
and a hawk flicks up, golden,
against the mackerel sky,
and up, again, golden
as the corn, catching
light.
Rebecca Brock’s work appears in The Threepenny Review, CALYX, Mom Egg Review, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest at The Comstock Review, the Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize and the Editor's Choice Award at Sheila-Na-Gig. The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2023) is her first collection. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccabrock.org.
Return to November 2023 Edition