She says she could forget, if not
for her indifferent feet,
the dead child, her dead child;
if not for the insistent feet

that bring her to the place where head
strong bombs stole his small hands, made
him a damaged bird with useless
wings, fit only for burying. She said

that when she shuts her restless
eyes to sleep, her child comes
back to life. I wonder
if God could forget about us,

too, if her own feet didn’t take her
unwilling to us, if we didn’t linger
behind her eyelids. I believe
that in the next world, if there

is a next world, all those who live
behind a mother’s lids, including those of
God, will be as real to everyone as to their mothers,
that God will be as real as every mother.

She has a Ph.D. in English from University of Pennsylvania, and have poems, reviews, and interviews forthcoming or that have appeared in a variety of American anthologies and journals, including Poet Lore, Main Street Rag, Nerve Cowboy, Free Verse, Pivot, Sonnet Scroll, tPortland Review Literary Journal.

Wendy believes: "It is hard to be a poet, but I think it is all I can really do with myself. When I went to college I studied engineering, but never worked as an engineer. Then I went to graduate school and got a doctorate in English so I could teach, but I didn't like teaching, because I could never write when I taught."

Here is two poems by her about mothers losing children:

Next Poem: June Runn