McKenzie Lynn Tozan
 
 Daughter Wild
 
This is the most I’ll ever know
about childbirth:
 
my pelvis refused to shape-shift
into its new form, a platform ready
 
for child, uterine wall still thick, no sign
 
of the due date come
and gone--
 
the refusal of my body to enter the mother state.
 
Instead they laid me out
on a table, body opened like a crooked flower
 
on a pedestal, the chrome too smooth
to bleed. When she was pulled
 
from my body, my mind was an open flame.
Now when my mind is too quiet, and
 
the drapes need to be pulled shut,
 
this is the image I hold onto:
her running ahead of me
 
in a field, hands trailing back, fingers
grazing the high grass, hair kicking
 
across her forehead as she laughs,
all the while looking back
 
looking back--

McKenzie Lynn Tozan lives and writes in Chicago with her family, where she works as a copywriter, poet, and book reviewer. She received her MFA in Poetry from Western Michigan University, where she worked as the Layout & Design Editor for New Issues Poetry & Prose, and her BA in English from Indiana University South Bend, where she was Managing Editor for 42 Miles Press. Her poems have appeared in Encore Magazine, Sleet Magazine, Rogue Agent, Thank You for Swallowing, Whale Road Review, The James Franco Review, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and Analecta, among others; and her book reviews and essays have appeared on The Rumpus, BookPage, Memoir Mixtapes, Health, and Motherly. For more, visit her at www.mckenzielynntozan.com.