Birth, by Charlie Brice

One hundred twelve years ago Marc Chagall
readied his palette, gripped his brush like
a conductor’s baton, swept it across his canvas,
and delivered Birth.

How weary the writhing bloodied mother,
how somber the midwife as she anxiously
offers the newborn to our eyes, and what
a sneak, that husband, who peaks between
bed and canopy.

Aglow with excitement villagers crowd
into the room. One man brings his cow
to see the new life. A peeping rabbi, his
face framed by a window pane, peers
into the room.

This pink bubala ignites the village,
vibrant in veneration, benediction,
and bathed in vermilion.

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Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His fifth full-length poetry collection is The Ventriloquist (WordTech Editions, 2022). His poetry has been nominated twice for the Best of Net Anthology and three times for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Muddy River Poetry Review, and elsewhere.