The Abortion Question: Susan Rich on Her Poetry Collection, Blue Atlas

From Red Hen Press

Nov 15, 2024

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The Abortion Question: Poet Susan Rich on Her Collection, Blue Atlas

Summary

The Abortion Question continues. In this interview poet Susan Rich discusses her collection Blue Atlas, which centers around the speaker’s persistent memories of an abortion she had thirty years ago. Susan tells us that she began this book many years ago, as a personal response to a prompt, but recognized how prescient it was becoming after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. This raises interesting issues about what happens to a poet when she makes something so personal suddenly public, and what happens when the personal becomes the basis for political comentary, and for art?

Poems

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Goldfinch 

They locked me up and 
then forgot me— 

here in the rope-cold dark 

I stammer a calligraphy of 
fears; I listen to a cinema 

of laughter and then its 

silence. This will be my life. 

The subtitles of 
something— terror, 
imagination, or a flare 

across my throat. I am not yet 

four, trapped in the attic 
eaves as I decipher 

my sister’s half-words 
calming her friend’s 
concern. Until as if from 
an afterlife— 

you must never tell or— 

I have no memory 
of which happened 

next: the long-slow 

descent 

of the ladder stairs 
toward dinner, the light 

milkweed shrouded air, or the 
goldfinch.



The Abortion Question 

The abortion question is did you want it? 
the abortion question is did you have a choice? 

The abortion happened in Manhattan— 

the Big Apple shaken and stirred along Madison Avenue— 
just two days after being kicked out of his 5th floor Paris 
walk-up. 

The abortion question watches you through sideview mirrors— 

the self-satisfied gaze like that of an undertaker, 
as if it holds the answer 

to the future of your body. 
The abortion question loves to flirt. It flirts 

with your sister who accompanies you. 
Flirt rhymes with skirt and you relinquish yours 

for a paper gown. The abortion question laughs 

with your sister (executor of the plan) who 
giggles back. But where is the deadbeat non-dad? 

Is he hiding in the hourglass, the dying tulips? 
Such a checked-out father-not-to-be. 

The abortion question is bone-tired; multilingual and
 
global; it looks back on its past, its coat hangers 

and back alleys, the wild herbs— 
cotton rootbark and black cohosh. 

Take ¼ cup pennyroyal water, 12 drops 
hartshorn, 

wrote Ben Franklin in his popular recipe 
for fixing “the misfortune.” 

The abortion question likes the founding mothers 
best— the midwives, crones, nurses, 

who created an underground network: 

a Jane Collective for the women 
who— 

fell into trouble, turned suicidal. 

Abortion is no joke to this body which ate 
enough for two: kosher pickle and chip 

sandwiches well into the second trimester. 

The abortion question places its miniature sticks 
into the cervix— 

small bundles of twigs made from seaweed. 

See you tomorrow! The abortion question waves. 

And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and 
tomorrow 

This is not an anti-abortion poem. 
No one will be killed with a 22-caliber rifle 

as in the two women’s health clinics in my hometown. 

No one pushing fetus porn outside the central post 
office. But the abortion question really loves to 
attract attention. 

It lives in a clock tower, chimes strongest at three 
months. 

Have you heard the one about the United States 
Supreme Court voting to legislate women’s bodies? 
What a question! 

The abortion question loves to fool around 
masquerading as a lawyer, as an illegally appointed judge.

It plays swashbuckler, predator, and prey. 

The question hangs about me like a 
pest tugging at my knees. Begs. 

It will not go away. 

Offers another drink— 
a Manhattan, shaken and stirred—