issue 36 > poetry > gibson
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Cribs
by Stephen Gibson
In a tour of ancient brothels in Pompeii, our guide explains
a slave girl became what was taught her in the crib.
In the Vatican’s medieval tapestry, The Massacre of the Innocents,
it’s difficult to see you’re witnessing slaughter in cribs.
A California gold rush photo shows a line-up of women
on duckboards in muddy water: their tent brothels are called “cribs.”
A New Orleans photo goes viral after Katrina—
in the lower Ninth Ward, the debris high-water mark is over a crib.
July, thirty-two years ago, after four miscarriages:
my wife and I finally get to see our daughter in a crib.