She bit off her lip in childbirth
alone on the howling prairie,
only a clapboard farmhouse
between her and the naked stipple
of the farm. She swore if she lived
till morning she would be gone,
but he limped in at dawn
under a sky like a truce
tender as his sleeping family,
and he changed. And she stayed.
Janet Ford
Janet Ford lives in the foothills of the Brushy Mountains in western North
Carolina. The recipient of the 2017 Guy Owen Prize from Southern Poetry Review, her
poems have appeared in The North Carolina Literary Review Online, Poetry East, and
Caesura as well as other publications. In February 2022 she was featured in Poetry in
Plain Sight and she received the 2022 Margaret Laughter Myers Residency Fellowship
Award.
