Katie Manning’s poem “Carrying” was published in the American Journal of Nursing (March 2020).
Manning shared that “Carrying” is “the first thing I've written about miscarriage.”
Amy Collins, managing editor of AJN, reflected on the poem's personal impact. "It immediately touched me because of the powerful way it described a sensitive topic: pregnancy loss. As a mother who lost a pregnancy in my second trimester, I found myself nodding with tears in my eyes at her elegant descriptions of grief and loss" (AJN Off the Charts 2020).
The poem begins:
An orca has been holding her dead calf’s body
on her back for seventeen days now. She deep
dives each time its decaying carcass slips down
into the Pacific to re-balance her baby on her head.
Click here to read the complete poem
Katie Manning is a professor of writing at PLNU and the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review.
For more about Katie Manning, visit her website, katiemanningpoet.com