Melanie Graham holds a PhD in poetry from the University of Lancaster, UK and recently completed her MFA at Sierra Nevada College. Her poems have appeared in Drunken Boat, Cherry Tree, The Mailer Review, and as a finalist in several competitions, including The Southeast Review, Split This Rock, and So To Speak. She won the 2016 Kakalak Poetry Prize. Her sonnet for Sylvia Plath is forthcoming in Fat Gold Watch, an anthology dedicated to Plath. ---------
My Son, Nursing
I type with one hand,
pause when the nipple slips, realign
his rooting. He laughs at nothing,
what the angels whisper, my mother says.
His twist-knot nose is my father's, someone
neither of us will know, though, lately,
the man pesters my dreams in flight suit
and shiny boots, talking without sound
and I know it's wrong
to search one so small for a streak of mean,
but it's the bluish-gray eyes, the smile
when he kicks the crib till his toes bleed,
how his lips keep moving
after I've pulled away.