[stylist] poems of controversial content

[Barbara Hammel]

Okay, sestinas are my newest form—along with villanelles—to master.  Do you think both of these are no good or do you actually like one of them?
  SESTINA 1


Who thinks it's okay for partial-birth

Abortions to be performed at all?

It's not only just a mass of cells  

But a perfectly-formed baby

That's growing at the half-way point;

A miniature little person.



Yes, a little, tiny person

Who will grow and gain before birth.

If you've held one you'll see the point

That there's nothing to the argument at all

About whether a twenty-weeker's a baby

And not just a throw-away mass of cells.



Sure, we all are made of cells,

A cat, a flower, a rock, a person,

Even if it's inside it's a baby,

Just much smaller than it will be at birth.

If the mothers one and all

Saw sonograms they'd get that point



That there's no return at any point

Once the fertilized egg divides into cells

That will rapidly form all

Of that little person

To be at birth

When you finally hold that baby.



After you're pregnant with a baby

Is not at the point

You decide not to give birth.

You're not just eliminating cells,

But a very tiny person,

With fingers and toes and heart and all.



Once, that is all

I wanted--a baby--

And too early that little person,

Came and made the point

That very soon those cells

Become a miniature of the child at birth.



O little person, there was never a point

When all I thought you were was cells.

You were always my baby, and sad was your birth.







  SESTINA 2



When I think of aborting a baby,

Especially after the first trimester,

I think of a very tiny boy

Who also knew death before life

Outside of his mother's womb

And not because she chose that to be



But because God had a reason for it to be.

O how we wanted that precious baby

That took extra help to grow in the womb

But by the middle of the second trimester

A tangled cord took the life

Of our longed-for little boy.



He was a perfect miniature boy.

All his parts were where they should be,

He just possessed no breath of life

As I tenderly held that wee baby.

I know what abortions past first trimester

Are removing from the womb.



I didn't wish to empty the womb

But he was a very wiggly little boy

And at twenty weeks, in second trimester,

His future, we knew, was not to be.

How could you abort a baby

That old and take its life?



Sure, at twenty weeks life

Is impossible outside of the womb

But for half its gestation you've carried that baby,

A perfectly miniature girl or boy.

After seeing that, I wonder how it can be

That you'd want to abort even in first trimester,



Let alone second or third trimester.

At conception is the beginning of life,

Or how could that zygote come to be

A growing fetus in the womb

Then enter the world as a girl or boy,

That long-anticipated baby?



We so wanted you to be, little one in the womb,

After the third trimester, the precious boy

Who we could share our life, beginning as our baby.







Let every nation know whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.--John F. Kennedy