Reading Response Week 8

My reading response is over Katie Chapel’s poem, “To a Child Not Conceived.” I read this when we first started reading her and I really thought this poem was amazing. I loved the beginning. It was powerful to start it with, “I left you with my ex/ and my mother’s hopes.” It throws me off because it’s just so direct and unexpected. After that, she writes about how she’s forty and overworked. She chose work over a family. When she talks about the “path that does not lead/ to amniotic fluid, a slit across the belly,” I thought about how this is really specific and vivid use of language. I get a little sad at the end even though I know this child wasn’t conceived because it ends with her talking about how she’s talking to her hands and how she doesn’t know why she is telling her child these things because she doesn’t know her. Katie has a way with words for sure.