About Brenda Shaughnessy: Brenda Shaughnessy is an American poet.
Where can we go if not to each other, resenting every step?
Secret, smug believers! they like to say, as if the strong should be punished for their strength: We can bear it. So we got it. But what about my baby? How weak does a newborn have to be to escape God's burdens?
How anyone becomes herself/is a mystery.
I've been melted into something too easy to spill. I make more and more of myself in order to make more and more of the baby. He takes it, this making. And somehow he's made more of me, too.
What if all possible pain was only the grief of truth?
