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Baby of the Month

By Maya Pindyck

My friend tells me she just saw October Baby,

a movie about a woman who finds out she was

almost aborted—“abortion survivor,” she calls herself.

I ask my friend if she’s seen the newest flick,

November Baby, about a woman who was almost a man

had a neighboring sperm found her mother’s egg first,

or March Baby, the heart-wrenching story of a woman

who wouldn’t even be had her mother not chugged

that third glass of wine & taken the postman between her legs,

or the one about the sorry egg that never split,

long lost twin forever twirling a rosy dream,

or the greatest tale of all, September Baby: known woman

who grew to love her own body without sentiment,

who slept with a quiet stranger, woke up pregnant, said

No, not yet, wore a cotton gown in a clean room

filled with bright women who laughed & wished her well

when the nurse called her name, woman who stayed

awake to feel the pain that comes with any choice,

then came home to a plate of ribs & brownies,

left what if to her readers, left Frost his roads diverged

& joined the impossible goats, snakes, stars & olive trees

in one million unrighteous shimmers.
Added: Thursday, July 24, 2014  /  Pindyck's poem tied for Third Place in the 2013 Abortion Rights Poetry Contest. Split This Rock is proud to co-sponsor this contest with the Abortion Care Network.
Maya Pindyck

Maya Pindyck's collection, Emoticoncert, was published by Four Way Books in 2016. Her previous collections include Friend Among Stones, winner of the Many Voices Project Award from New Rivers Press, and Locket, Master, selected by Paul Muldoon for a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. A multidisciplinary poet and artist, she is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Historic House Trust of NYC's Contemporary Art Partnerships Program, Squaw Valley Writers, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. In 2005, she co-founded Project Voice, an abortion story archive. Currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University's Teachers College, she teaches at Parsons School of Design and Long Island University.

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