Response to Faces by Renee Norman and her Martha poems
(miscarriage and abandoning one’s children)
by Renee Cohen

Medusa, Renee Norman, Doris Lessing, & Martha
tricked, deceived, saddened
by an impossible burden of loss:
risky writing – of a mother’s loss of child –

intentional or not –
transgressive in opening floodgates
of unbearably bloody memories, blotched & bloody sadness,
bloody wounds, uncoagulated,
self & other roughly, ripped asunder
that $10 dollars wasn’t everything
the bloody wound closed a bit to scar
& we go on – each woman –
$10 short.
what sacrifice of loss do we choose –
not choosing still it comes
what $10 is this?