Poem of the Week | July 17, 2023

This week’s Poem of the Week is “Poem for the Women Who Help You Go to the Bathroom Hours After You’ve Given Birth” by Luisa Muradyan.

Luisa Muradyan is originally from Odesa, Ukraine and is the author of American Radiance (University of Nebraska Press). She is the winner of the 2017 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and a member of the Cheburashka Collective. Additional work can be found at Best American Poetry, the Threepenny Review, Guernica, Ploughshares, and the Georgia Review.

Poem for the Women Who Help You Go to the Bathroom Hours After You’ve Given Birth

Everyone thought that the bird

who fell out of the sky

was dead from exhaustion.

She could no longer do the thing

that she was born to do.

It’s like that, except

minutes before the fall

when the wind

made her empty body

weightless.

Author’s Note

If you’ve ever given birth, then you know the nurses who help you get out of bed carry you in more ways than just physical. This was the first poem I wrote after giving birth to my third child, when writing anything at all felt impossible and miraculous.