‘Gastric Brooding Frogs’ by Stephanie Conn

The day I swallowed my children
was the day the world took notice.
It was nineteen seventy-four, though
I had been making my stomach a womb
for years, and my mother and her mother
ate their own eggs and felt the alkaline kick
as the hydrochloric acid stopped; a necessary halt
to prevent us digesting our young. We tolerate the fast
when twenty squirming tadpoles hatch in our bellies
and wriggle sticky mucus from their gills to keep
the furious acid at bay. Our middles bloat until
our lungs collapse and we all must breathe
through our skin till the birthing starts;
propulsive vomiting, as we spew out,
into the world, life-ready froglets.

From issue #6: spring/summer 2018

About the Author
Stephanie Conn’s first collection, The Woman on the Other Side (Doire Press), was shortlisted for the Shine/Strong Award for best first collection. Her pamphlet Copeland’s Daughter (Smith/Doorstep) won the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition and is published by Smith/Doorstep. Her latest collection, Island, was published by Doire Press in 2018.