So, there will be no babies.
No baby showers, laughing pastel misses
drinking too much champagne, faces red as brick,
congratulating, congratulating. “You’ve done it!”
No breast milk or breast pumps, no use for breasts,
except the male eye looking down with desire,
nothing admirable, nothing sublime—
No tiny feet, a little hand
wrapped around her index finger, a tiny grip.
There will be no blankets,
the smell of a child, fresh from bathwater.

Long discussions about what is appropriate
to feed a toddler. The fear
when her five-year-old has fever
and she realizes she can’t protect her progeny
from every world danger.
The relief when her child is better.
Thinking, I would give my life for her.
and knowing it to be true
from heart muscle to heart muscle.
No little voice crying, mommy, from next door.
No running downstairs wide-eyed at Christmas,
or going out to gaze at lights, no knees to kiss,
small stomachs to pretend to gobble.

No hair to brush, nightmares to brush away,
dreams to reassure. No mother’s day cards
made from green crayon,
yellow construction paper
and a child’s incorruptible love.
No macaroni paintings of a lumpy pear
mistaken for a porous orange
to hang on the refrigerator.

No girl scouts, report cards or pink slips to sign,
eighth grade, vicarious living through prom,
sending her off in a silvery dress,
reading bedside books every night
that lead to A’s in college, graduation
where she tears and cries and embarrasses
her child by shouting, that’s my baby!
Never to love what love made.

No brown eyes staring with curiosity
and otherworld knowledge
that she belongs, that even if she dies,
she still belongs,
that she held her
fresh from her body,
that she will always be mother,
even if hated.

Empty.

She was asleep, thick with anesthetic,
and she awoke hollow.
After the operation,
they gave her substitutions;
crochet, puzzles, adult coloring,
books to inspire, a journal to write poems
that stumble to describe the inconceivable loss.

She wanted that labor,
the scream and the push, the cry.
The cost is too high, but she pays.
It doesn’t matter, they say.
Maybe she can take up a trade.
Maybe she can travel and teach.
Surely she can adopt.

There’s an answer for a woman who has no uterus.
But her laugh is bitter as dark beer
and sometimes she sees her,
her daughter, her biological daughter,
her blue baby who would be nine-years-old.
It’ll catch her unaware, a movie, a song,
a mother tying her child’s shoe on the bus.

After surgery, her mother touched her,
the way only a mother can.
She sat next to her on her bed the morning of
and said, “I’m sorry,” with love, with care
the way only a mother can. And she knew—
there would be no little one held close against her breast,
a coverall for all the awful wrongs,
tiny arms wrapped around her neck,
swinging, swinging, unafraid to fall. No.
No.
There will be nothing.
There will be nothing like that at all.

Tamara Oakman, a neo-confessional writer and also English, writing, ESL and humanities professor, has had work appear in such magazines as Many Mountains Moving, Philadelphia Stories and Best of Anthology, Mad Poets Review, Certain Circuits Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Fox Chase Review and other online and in print magazines. She has awards in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama, and performs poetry and fiction in Philadelphia and the surrounding tri-state areas. She has an MA in English and an MA in humanities from Arcadia University. She studied Pulitzer Prize winning poet Anne Sexton at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in Boston, MA, and during two independent studies at Arcadia where she lived in the poet’s space and interviewed friends and colleagues (including Maxine Kumin) culminating in a 40-page article about her journey blended with a critical analysis of Sexton’s work. She also gives lectures on Sexton’s biography and body of work. She studied creative writing fiction in Umbria, Italy with tours of Bevagna, Spello, Assisi, Spoleto, Montefalco, and Roma.

Tamara G. Oakman, a neo-confessional writer and also an English, writing, ESL and humanities professor, has had work appear in such magazines as Many Mountains Moving, Philadelphia Stories and Best of Anthology, Mad Poets Review, Certain Circuits Magazine, Fox Chase Review and other online and in print magazines. She has awards in poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and drama, and performs poetry and fiction in Philadelphia and the surrounding tri-state areas. She has an MA in English and an MA in humanities from Arcadia University where she studied Pulitzer Prize winning poet Anne Sexton at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in Boston, MA. This was during two independent studies at where she lived in the poet’s space and interviewed friends and colleagues (including Maxine Kumin) culminating in a 40-page article about her journey blended with a critical analysis of Sexton’s work. She also gives lectures on Sexton’s biography and body of work. She studied creative writing fiction in Umbria, Italy with tours of Bevagna, Spello, Assisi, Spoleto, Montefalco, and Roma.

She is an event coordinator who has hosted, created and organized many events, series, writing workshops and festivals in Philadelphia namely, The Light of Unity Festival, In Celebration of Women, Writing for Therapy, The Business of Words, and the Philadelphia Poetry Festival. She judged; the Hidden River Arts fiction and drama contest, the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference poetry contest, the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Competition (2012), and Ursinis College’s Dolman Prize (2013). Her efforts have been reported in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The City Paper, The Metro, The Reporter and she has been televised on WHYY in their Friday Arts Series, and through Moonstone Arts and PhillyCam presenting: Who Do You Love? Pablo Neruda. She has edited multiple anthologies and published multiple writers in the city of Philadelphia. She is co-founder and internship coordinator for APIARY magazine. Come see what the buzz is all about at www.apiarymagazine.com!