Rebecca Brock
The Way Land Breaks
by Rebecca Brock
ISBN: 9798987305843 $16.00 ($4.63 US Shipping per order) 
Rebecca Brock is the author of The Way Land Breaks (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023). Her work appears in The Threepenny Review, Bellevue Literary Review, THRUSH, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. In 2022, she won the Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Poetry Contest at The Comstock Review and the Kelsay Book’s Woman’s Poetry Prize. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccabrock.org.
It Is Easy to Forget We Are Fragile
Each of us born raw,
some stay—the skin itself
its own prison catching
like a broken fingernail
on anything
that grabs back.
Yes, there is anguish
and wretchedness
but, also, friendship,
good dogs, strange beauty
outlined in a frozen moment—
it is easy to forget we are fragile.
Sometimes need seeks need—ice or fire—
to numb or name or come closest
to desire—some primal racing of the heart:
love, or lust, danger or the need
to become just creature,
knowing what it is
to breathe.
Unconquerable
The seaside restaurant’s mac & cheese
came with breadcrumbs and chunks
of ham, even peas. The too much
of it deflated my four-year-old
like a balloon with a slow leak.
I knew enough to get us both
outside to breathe—ocean air,
the waves sounding behind us.
But he wouldn’t calm, or couldn’t.
My words swooped over his head
with the crassness of seagulls.
It was heartbreak and hunger,
and my own faltering: the stink eye
from the crowded restaurant
still burning on my cheeks.
I was so young.
So quick to say what should be, what ought
to be. Buddy, I finally said, Buddy,
who’s in charge here?
I expected him to say,
believed he would say: you, Mama.
But he let go my hand and pointed
his small, still chubby, index finger
into his own chest, so serious
I stifled a laugh—but, didn’t he know?
More than me already?
Little master of his fate,
tiny captain of his soul.
