A   Q U E S T I O N A B L E   M O T H E R

The camera crews were gone home for the evening,
an infant dead but, then again, as always,
the white globes fading on above the entrance.
The estranged boyfriend stayed with family, resting.
The suspect’s parents clasped hands in the foyer.
Their daughter was once more a daughter only,
yet, blood or no, unsound or no, no daughter.
Not calm but quiet settled in the station,
in all who’d heard her cry they must believe her.
The suspect’s father petted a police dog,
and felt, without remarking, it was pregnant.
The cracked, hard leather chairs were now familiar.
Life’s fell astonishments were now familiar.
Here thoughts of murder weren’t all that uncommon.
Nakedness was uncovered by the hour.
Within, the suspect cried they must believe her.
The female officer behind a window
of thick green glass typed slowly without stopping.
Beneath the squat cap holding in her hairdo,
her face suggested she withheld her judgment.
The unleashed shepherd lay beside her, licking.
She didn’t look at it, but typed on, thinking
animals always know when they are dirty.



"A Questionable Mother" originally appeared in Chattahoochee Review XXII, no. 1 (fall 2002): 33.