From New Poems (2000), "donor" Summary

This poem is dedicated "to lex," which from the poem we learn is the poet's thirty-year-old son. Presumably, the son has donated an organ to his mother, and this puts her in mind of the time when she found she was expecting him, when she was pregnant. She says she tried hard to get rid of him, even inserting coat hangers to dislodge the baby, taking pills, trying anything to abort. However, she says that her baby stubbornly hung on, refusing to leave her.

Even if her body rejects the transplant, she feels her son lex inside her, even now as an adult, "buckled in despite me," she says. She compares her son's tenacity for life to the frown on an angel's brow.

From New Poems (2000), "donor" Analysis

Revealing multiple attempts to abort...