Claudia F. Saleeby Savage

Mammal

next time
give me
an egg exit
quick
out of the vagina
with a satisfying  pop 

a moment of white-on-white
egg glow bright

Mammal

 Let me be your boat,
your fretful antidote, let me
mollusk your invertebrate
weight to my chest,
rest, my love, rest. Let me
be your bed at first light
through afternoon, your first spoon,
your sun and evening room, let me enfold
your pliant ribs as circle.
We live on a sphere, let me
fold my elbows, wrists, breasts, chin
around you. Cohere.

Claudia F. Saleeby Savage is an Arab-American poet, essayist, and mama who struggles with disability. She is the author, most recently, of Bruising Continents (Spuyten Duyvil) with recent work in Poetry Northwest, BOMB, Anomaly, About Place, and River Teeth. She performs regularly with her music-text duo Thick In The Throat Honey (they were recent semi-finalists for a Creative Capital award for a piece on the Syrian refugee crisis). Her collaboration about motherhood, reductions, with visual artist Jacklyn Brickman, will be exhibited in Portland and Detroit in 2023. Saleeby Savage works in the field of renewable energy and lives and creates with her husband and daughter in Portland, OR.