April 22nd, 2022
Three Poems
by Jill Michelle
When the Orderly Wheels Me Out Afterward
there is a family
loading up their SUV
fumbling with the baby seat
as the morning sun winks
off the shiny Mylar balloons
with their blinding pink hues
confetti exploding around the words:
Congratulations! It’s a girl!
and I can’t swallow
the hiccupped sob
before the new mother hears
turns, smile caught
on my balloonless wheelchair
watery stare
no cart of bouquets to be
packed in the backseat
no pastel-tissued gift bags
to tuck in the trunk
no baby
just a lapful of grief
just me, watching the family
I thought we would be
as I wait for my husband
to pull up
rescue me.
Jill Michelle reads “When the Orderly Wheels Me Out Afterward”:
Empty Nest
You remember the children you got that you did not get
—Gwendolyn Brooks
That first morning after is the worst—you
instinctively reach for her only to remember
you’ve failed once again, are as empty as the
abandoned house across the street, children
falling through the faulty floorboards you
call a body. Train-engine heartbeat you got
to hear each week at the doctor’s office, that
jelly-bean body, the flurry of feet that you
watched on the black & white screen but did
not ever get to see in color, this daughter not
to be met—ultrasound memories, all we get.
Jill Michelle reads “Empty Nest”:
Waiting Room Blues
Stuck here in another doctor’s office with its basic
whitewashed walls, tiled floors, generic décor, pastel-
painted triptychs, slanted pink lines to stare at, instead
of that wall calendar, announcing another February and
casting fourteen years off as fast as that last cotton gown
slid down to a blue puddle on the hospital floor.
Remind yourself: this is just the allergist, dermatologist,
orthopedist—no OBGYN anymore, no high-risk specialist.
You aren’t pregnant with anything but grief. It swells
your belly like a phantom limb. Baby bump grown back.
You listen for the ultrasound, the train back on its track.
Jill Michelle reads “Waiting Room Blues”:
Jill Michelle teaches at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Her latest poems appear/are forthcoming in DMQ Review, untethered magazine, Delmarva Review, Coffee People and Drunk Monkeys. Recent anthology credits include The Book of Bad Betties (Bad Betty Press, UK) and Words from the Brink (Arachne Press Limited, UK). To check out more of her work, visit byjillmichelle.com.