“One of my first shifts in the ER, I looked down the throat
of a young boy and saw a nail. The boy smiled. He coughed.
The nail quivered.”
Enjoy this audio recording of “I don’t know what to do for my own sons” by Jessica Pierce from Vol. 32:2 of CALYX Journal!
Jessica Pierce is a Pushcart Prize nominee living in Beaverton, OR. She has poems in magazines including Bellingham Review, Tar River Poetry, Euphony, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She was a finalist in the 2019 NORward Prize for Poetry from New Ohio Review, the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry from Nimrod International Journal, and the 2020 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize from CALYX Journal.