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Pseudocyesis

by Anna B. Sutton

To carry grief in the belly

for nine months—breasts swollen

with milk. To hear a heartbeat

where there is none but

your own, see a blinking presence

in the salt lake of your abdomen.

It won’t be a mystery

to the doctor who slices

a smile across your lap, tells you

about a dog nursing a row

of stones. Nature plants its ghosts

inside us sometimes.

About Anna B. Sutton

Anna B. Sutton’s work has appeared in Indiana Review, Third Coast, Copper Nickel, Booth, Los Angeles Review, and other journals. She received her MFA from University of North Carolina Wilmington and a James Merrill fellowship from Vermont Studio Center. She is a co-founder of the Porch Writers’ Collective and has worked for numerous literary organizations, including Humanities Tennessee, Lookout Books, Blair Publisher, Gigantic Sequins, One Pause Poetry, Dialogist, and Ecotone. Her debut collection, Savage Flower, won the St. Lawrence First Book Prize and will be published by Black Lawrence Press in 2021.