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Pantoum For The Gyn That Asks If I Really Want More Children

By Peggy Robles-Alvarado

She insists three kids are more than enough
Puerto Rican Tías are missing wombs
Tells me I’m still young, more than “just a mom”
Calls it a quick, simple operación

My Tías dug graves for their missing wombs
White coats whittled Atabey from their core
Gave la operación without consent
Severed roots & limbs, carved their initials

This doctor wants to slash & burn my core
Thinks me savage, an invasive species
Assures me she won’t carve her initials
These operations are routine for her

Boricuas are not an invasive species
Madre is thicket, lush, more than “just a mom”
Bloodletting brown bodies is routine for her
She insists three kids are more than enough


 

 

 

Listen as Peggy Robles-Alvarado reads "Pantoum for The Gyn That Asks If I Really Want More Children"
Added: Friday, January 8, 2021  /  Used with permission.
Peggy Robles-Alvarado

Peggy Robles-Alvarado is a Pushcart Prize nominee, 2020 Atticus Review Poetry Contest winner, and a BRIO award winner with fellowships from CantoMundo, Desert Nights Rising Stars, The Frost Place, and VONA. She’s also a three-time International Latino Book Award winner who authored Conversations With My Skin (2011) and Homage To The Warrior Women (2012). Through Robleswrites Productions, she created The Abuela Stories Project (2016) and Mujeres, The Magic, The Movement, and The Muse (2017). Her work has been featured on HBO Habla Women, Lincoln Center, and her poetry appears in several anthologies including The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext (2020), What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019), and ¡Manteca!- Afro- Latin@ Poets (2017). For more, visit the poet's website.

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