Night Feeding

Night Feeding

Hallie Waugh

Nights I pray the beads
of your spine as you sap
my breasts of milk.

Your milkwhite body curls
like incense smoke amidst
my petitions: don’t choke,

don’t drown, don’t grow
to resent me. I mouth
my beggar’s prayers, see

them float above
the howls of coyotes
behind our house.

The prayers return every night
bearing a mother’s burden:
love and fear, those razor-

toothed edges gnawing
me through the belly
each moment of your beautiful,
ravenous life.

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Hallie Waugh
Poet & Professor

Hallie is a copywriter and creative writing professor by day, poet and essayist by night. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Seattle Pacific University, and her poetry and essays have been published with Nations Media, Windhover, Fathom, and is forthcoming from New York Quarterly. She lives with her husband, two sons, and energetic Boxer mix in Oklahoma City. You can find more of her work at halliewaugh.com or follow her at @halliewaugh_writer.

Photography by Meghan Holmes