Rachel Rinehart
Milky Way Nine Patch
Star-bellied and spangled with stretch marks,
my mother in her 38th week
pulls the threads of a galaxy.
In the barn-night my father wilts
over a kidding goat,
snaps his own terrestrial tethers.
Rock of Ages and the rocking needle,
they sing me, lull and scrape.
Above, dark heat boiling,
below only light, cold and pure
as cream.
I, yet unmade, roil in my mother
another day.
Rachel Rinehart grew up in Chuckery, Ohio, and currently lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where she is an MFA candidate at McNeese State University. Her poems have appeared in Jelly Bucket, Third Coast, and Harpur-Palate and are forthcoming in Apalachee Review, The Massachusetts Review, Puerto del Sol, and Folio.