Happy Mother’s Day

In honor of Mother’s Day, we are pleased to share this beautiful poem by Cincinnati’s Poet Laureate Manuel Iris. In addition to serving in that role, Iris has been the Writer-in-Residence at both the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library and Thomas More University. The 2025 recipient of the Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets, he was named a member of Mexico’s National System of Art Creators in 2021. 

Witness

Your daughter is dancing, says my wife
touching her belly.

For the past five months
I have been a witness
to what happens there,
under her hands.

My wife is a house inside my house
and I am outside of my own heart.

I am sure she is happy, she says
and I would give up poetry
in exchange for having, inside me, my daughter.
For feeling that dance that bonds them
to all beginnings.

But that option does not exist
and I do what I can:
cooking, fulfilling cravings,
writing a poem in which I say what I can see
from this side of the skin
in which mystery embodies itself.

And I testify, with loving envy,
that an everyday miracle
is a miracle

and nothing less.

— Manual Iris, from The Parting Present (Dos Madress Press)