To an Older Sibling, Miscarried

Abstract

To an Older Sibling, Miscarried Derek Mong (bio) Forestalled one bracketed in absences why does your sleep still stir an echoing on nights my mother calls and has nothing to say? Was it there, fluent through the phone's black holes I heard you disappear, either whisked into some other womb or recalled by the wakeless, some darkness that welcomed you to plague our mother with sleeplessness— your face and fingertips mining her dreams like ingrown hairs? Often I envy you, first cut from my father's mold, yet wholly expectationless. Why are you always male? We met thirteen years back, the evening my dad took me to the Health Museum and explained exactly how it went wrong— one man, one boy circled by nine female [End Page 140] mannequins whose bellies were wide glass balls ballooning month by month. The display was called the "Panorama of Pregnancy" and in a voice that said I was old enough my father read the paneling and pressed a button and acknowledged It was there— blue light, fifth ball from the right, you were pale. He held my forehead to the cold fluorescent until I hummed. Until it pulsed with my voice. Derek Mong Although born in Portland, Oregon, Derek Mong was raised outside Cleveland and educated at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. He has a brother living on the island of Kauai, parents in Washington State and extended family spread from Dallas to Berkeley. Currently he lives in Ann Arbor, where he attends the University of Michigan’s MFA program and teaches. In 2005 he was given a Hopwood Award for a poetry manuscript in which “To an Older Sibling, Miscarried” appeared. Of the poems here he writes: “‘Re: Vitruvian Man’ is a failed attempt to capitalize on The Da Vinci Code’s popularity. ‘Recoil’ stems from an experience with a landlord who insisted I hold his automatic weapon while we talked politics.” This summer the Southern Review will publish a translation sequence he made from medieval Latin hymns. This is his first publication. Copyright © 2006 The Curators of the University of Missouri