Homebound

Jenny Irish

On the lam, in the churned and cratered aftermath of a clear-cut on a mountainside, the metal womb finds the skeletonized remains of two eaglets, their bones preserved all tidily together in the failed protection of a nest. With one makeshift finger of one makeshift hand, she softly traces the circle of the sclerotic ring of an eye. Night is settling above, and the stars are so bright they seem alive and moving. The metal womb leaves the eaglets as she found them and lays her makeshift hands over the recessed circle of her belly button, her hatch, perfectly round and, despite her makeshift hands, which are five-fingered and styled after human hands, what she believes is the most human part of her, a portal connecting outside to in. Softly, she traces the circle of it, feeling for unevenness, for something she might slip a makeshift finger under, for something she might pick at, or pry, because it is now so far past harvest, and she did not mean to hold these would-be-future-humans forever, only wanted to know where they went after they were taken from her, only wanted to choose what would happen next inside her, but her hatch is as smooth as a magic mirror, as featureless as glass, sealed tight as a secret. The metal womb stills the makeshift finger of her makeshift hand and tells herself to sleep. Slowly, her awareness of the stars and the maimed trees and the mud and the round dead-absence of the eaglet’s eyes all thickens and warms until she feels as blurred as a reflection in a puddle punctured by a rock. The slow-pouring syrup of sleep slips over her like a blanket drawn up or two curtains pulled to meet, and she must sleep then, because she dreams of fireflies tapping against the curve of a glass jar that she is holding close, and when she wakes it is to her makeshift fingers digging at her hatch, all broken-back and splintered.

Feature Date

Series

Selected By

Share This Poem

Print This Poem

Poet Image of Jenny Irish

Jenny Irish is the author of the hybrid collections Common Ancestor, Tooth Box, and Lupine, the short story collection I am Faithful, and most recently, Hatch. She teaches creative writing at ASU, and in partnership with The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, facilitates free arts education programming featuring local artists and educators every summer.

“Hatch couldn't be timelier . . . we should heed the calls of poets like Irish, who write with the oracular voices of old.”
—Rain Taxi

“To read Hatch is to consider bodily autonomy, the push and pull of progress and regression, cycles of learning and mislearning and relearning. Irish confronts sexism and racism in the medical field, ego in science, misclassification and bias in tech . . . Hatch is striking and surreal, a strange fable uncomfortably rooted in truth, in which we face our history, our present, our history-in-the-making.”
—Heavy Feather Review

Poetry Daily Depends on You

With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.