Each child fighting through delivery's challenge, through the trial and error of contractions' building pressures; all laborers in the bloody work of birth, the women who struggle in sterile rooms and in septic beds, who grit and moan, scream and will life into being across the deltas, cities, mountains, plains, deserts, forests, and earth's isolated quarters, opening to forceps and thin steel, to hot water and pain and gravity's drag and muscles' weary surrender; all those making this covenant to milk and sweat, to life and bread and breath grip tight the fabric swaddling the mortal package, a frame to support small defiant fists pounding the first blow in this contest where every champion remains crowned, undefeated and retired in the fleeting glory of the single nascent moment. Copyright © Jon Tribble. http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm @3Prairie Schooner@1 is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the campus-based literary journals. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SEMANTICS OF FLOWERS ON MEMORIAL DAY by BOB HICOK MODULATIONS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE HARD TIMES IN ELFLAND; A STORY OF CHRISTMAS EVE by SIDNEY LANIER THE AWAKENING RIVER by KATHERINE MANSFIELD AT THE MERMAID TAVERN (APRIL 10, 1613) by EDGAR LEE MASTERS A FOOL, A FOUL THING, A DISTRESSFUL LUNATIC by MARIANNE MOORE |