Curving of the Corn

New Madrid earthquake quickens

his mama’s pangs.

The baby’s uncle proclaims the tremor

the work of a Shawnee’s

flat-footed stomp;

the father names it

the Lord’s wrath

rattling the tares loose from

the earth’s embrace.

When the midwife trots in

along the bow of the river,

the white behind

the mother’s green eye

is softly mottled with bloodshot capillaries

like a rooster’s marked egg—

her brain quakes in a brittle

shale of skullcap.

The midwife studies the woman;

wrists and ankles

swollen purple

and rash-pimpled skin

splitting at the crevices

like rotten melon rind

and she leaves off

her homespun conceits of mercy.

No opened scissors

are snugged

under the rope webbing

of the blankets

to cut the pain,

nor swallow’s

dirt-daubed tea funneled

into the mother’s mouth.

She commends the pair of them

to providence—

saying you will be delivered

of a child

or to your reward

by moonrise.

The older brothers

are shuttled out to the corncrib

to wait in silence

as the earth opens,

the Mississippi changes its course

and delivers the child

to the cramped cradle—

34°10’43”N 82°22’45”W.

Sixth and last

of a rattling line,

his mama rasps his name, William,

five times overridden

and finally earned

but soon eclipsed

when the baby’s brothers peek

at his face through the blanket fold.

The oldest and cleverest

pronounces him Crescent—

flag’s heraldry for the youngest son.

Bound tight

upon the slim scythe

of rich land puckered

between the Salundy and Corn Creek.

The baby’s waxen,

fat-banded arms

already bent

on worrying the muslin free.