Poem: ‘My Head and My Mother’s Breast in Quarantine Together’
Sharon Olds, 15 December 2022
After nine months safe and wellin a room alone, I was sitting facingthe afternoonwinter sunlight,a magnifying mirror proppedon the windowsill. Some skin over mybreastbone was swollen, I pressed downand in, on either side of the tiny hill.And where had I ever seen a snakestrike by flying through the air, but out of thelittle half-egg mound a six-inchviper, yellow-green, shot,and I pushed again,...
