The long-tortured years
are flung away

in one fell swoop
and you’re my young

laughing mother
calling me “rippe”

German for rib
because I’m such

a skinny girl
as you were once

a skinny girl
before the great assault

of blood   
of breasts

—

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky’s poems have been widely published, most recently in Serving House Journal, Ginosko and Stickman. Her poem “Madelyn Dunham, Passing On” won first prize in the Obama Millennium Contest. She has also won the Blue Light Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lowinsky’s fourth poetry collection is The Faust Woman Poems.