My Ancestors Accuse Me of Childlessness
Cherise Pollard

Ain’t you lonely, girl?
Who gone remember you?

Your momma and daddy? Our people?
What you done that for?

Work? Some thoughts? Some papers you ain’t
raised to grade, girl? Ain’t like you can’t cook,
keep house, keep folk alive. How did it happen?

We was ready to come through in future
faces: in laughter, and the pace of a certain
walk. We was ready to set our smile on tiny lips.

We was ready to place our particular aches
and pains, even the shakes we got, in tender
flesh one more time. How you gone leave

the trace of us dead inside you?

Cherise A. Pollard, Ph.D., is Professor of English at West Chester University. A Cave Canem and Callaloo Fellow, Pollard was awarded a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her poem, “Sugar Babe” was a Finalist for the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, Outsiders, was chosen by C.M. Burroughs as the winner of the 2015 Susan K. Collins/Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest sponsored by the Midwest Writing Center. Along with Wendy Scott Paff and Daniela Buccilli, Pollard is co-editor of the Show Us Your Papers poetry anthology (Main Street Rag Press, 2020). She is currently co-editing an anthology of poems about Motown.