Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “White Paper Birds” by Shannon Bramer, which was first published in Poetry Pause in April 2020.

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White Paper Birds

By Shannon Bramer

Sometimes you have to breastfeed your kid  

even when you don’t feel like breastfeeding 

your kid. Near the end of her feed she pulls off 

to look at you with her round eyes and you don’t 

look away. Sometimes you have to sing 

your kid to sleep even when you don’t feel up 

to any song. When you put her down she  

cries, she always cries. You pick her up when  

you are a piece of glass. You kiss her  

and kiss her and pick her up and put her down  

and kiss her again like a wolf. 

You are a real mother.   

You don’t kick or break any toys  

on purpose. And you don’t scream and you don’t weep. 

Your baby grows. You’ve got a shiny red shovel  

for all your shitty feelings. 

You’ve got a daughter with a broken lip  

where she’s been biting down. 

The house is full of nests. Tiny piles of torn  

newsprint, a million crumpled swans 

swimming down the stairs. Another life  

folded inside each paper bird. 

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Copyright © Shannon Bramer

Originally published in Precious Energy (Book*hug, September 2017). First published in Poetry Pause in April 2020.

Shannon Bramer is an author of poems, plays and short fiction. She has published Climbing Shadows: Poems for Children, illustrated by Cindy Derby; Robot, Unicorn, Queen: poems for you and me, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher (David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry Award); and several poetry collections for adults, including Precious Energy and suitcases and other poems (Hamilton and Region Arts Council Book Award). She lives with her family in Toronto, Ontario.

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