Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Poem-of-the-Week: Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor














After The UPS Man Shouted "Feed Your Baby At Home" Through His Truck Window

.......Beauford, North Carolina May 2007


Bionic Feeding Woman

whips breasts out, sprays

privacy netting over him,

through the window. She slays


public ignorance. Offensive,

angry and green, she stays

right where she is, extensive

superpower network plays


the news: Continental Airlines,

2003, Deborah Wolf charged

a terrorist during times

of war for milky discharge


in the face of passenger

complaint; Toys R Us

September 2006, stranger

for a children's store to fuss


when Chelsi Meyerson

busted out her right to feed

in the store's corner, shunned

by five harassing employees


who called security. Cover-up!

Applebees' manager told

Brooke, mother of 8. Cover up!

insisted the United steward,


throwing a used blanket across

Alina and her baby Rose.

Captain Areola, Boob Boss,

Mutant Nipple, each goes


on nursing, fighting the disease

of propriety like diaper rash,

growing muscles, curing degrees

of fever with a stubborn milky cache.


-Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor


Used by permission.


Melisa "Misha" Cahnmann-Taylor is the co-author of Teachers Act Up! Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre (2010, Teachers College Press) and Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice (2008, Routledge) and has published poetry and reviews in many journals including APR, Alaska Quarterly, Georgia Review, Barrow Street and Quarterly West. She won the 2004, 2005, and 2008 Dorothy Sargent Prizes. Cahnmann-Taylor is Associate Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia.

Cahnmann-Taylor appeared on the panel Birth and the Politics of Motherhood in Poetry during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

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