Childless

by Natalie Crick

I lost six children here in the wood.
Even now, I see
bright hair flashes in pools of sun;
babies’ hair.
Gestures flake away
warm and human,
their pink light bleeding and peeling,
falling like blessings.

My womb rattles inside its cage:
this body,
ungodly as an infant scream.
I spin on my own spike.

If I call,
they might crawl out,
death-gowns frilled at the neck,
wet waxen feet.

The moon has nowhere to go.
I have been
filling and emptying for years.

Natalie Crick, from the UK, has poetry published or forthcoming in a range of journals and magazines in the UK including Interpreters House, Poetry Salzburg Review, Bare Fiction, Poetry Scotland, The SHOp, and London Grip. Outside of the UK, she has work published in Rust and Moth, The Chiron Review, 2River, The Ofi Press, The Perch Arts and Literary Magazine (Yale University), Plath Profiles, and The Adirondack Review. She is studying for an M.A. in Writing Poetry at Newcastle University (UK) and is currently taught by Tara Bergin and Jacob Polley. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. She has been invited to read poetry at Newcastle’s poetry festival this May (UK).