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FOUR WAY REVIEW

Dara Yen Elerath’s debut poetry collection, Dark Braid (2020, BkMk Press), won John Ciardi Prize for Poetry and was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic, American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series, Plume, AGNI, Boulevard, and High Country News, among other journals. She is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts MFA in Creative Writing program and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

THE BABIES by Dara Yen Elerath

Friday, 15 August 2025 by Dara Yen Elerath

I am watching the babies. The gray one in sticky pants who keeps picking his nose. The pale one with headlice, scabies and fleas. I am watching the babies. This one choking on a plastic bottle. This one talking to itself in the dark. I am hauling the babies to the park, to the library, to the pool. The orange-hued baby is dirty and plays with crayons. The makeshift baby is taped together like a cardboard box. Where did these odd babies come from? Why are they languid and dull—limp in their cradles as loaves of bread? Why do I find them now in the garbage, now in the fork drawer, now in the kitchen sink? I grab a pink one crawling from between my thighs. I clutch a yellow one suckling upon my breasts. I find one hanging from branches like a piece of fruit. This one I dug from the dirt like a vegetable freckled with roothairs and worms. I gather the babies and turn them over, looking for the maker’s mark, but find no scrawl, no autograph, no trace of when or how these babies were made. I try to abandon them, but they come crawling after. I put them in a hamper, but they clamber out and grab my hair. These babies are my babies. I take them everywhere. This one carries my kneecap. This one carries my thigh. This one carries my heart. 

dara yen elerathPoetry
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  • Published in Featured Poetry, Issue 33, Poetry
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