The Fight
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About this ebook
Winner of the 2022 Trio Award, Jennifer Manthey's The Fight showcases Manthey's experience with adoption, alongside
Jennifer Manthey
Jennifer Manthey is a writer and teacher. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband, three children, and one Saint Bernard.
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The Fight - Jennifer Manthey
U.S. Embassy, Kinshasa, DRC
Black men hold the door and hold
guns. White men hold ink and stamps
behind bulletproof glass. At each
window, a vase with a single bird-
of-paradise, which is the most
tight-lipped of all the flowers.
Black women softly
speak their answers.
We play the part of white women -
dutiful, quiet. At the end
of the afternoon, we leave with their babies.
I.
Referral Photograph: Baby Boy, One Month Old
There should be no metaphor for lack
of a mother. The blanket he is wrapped in,
flash-lightened, is a blanket.
His hands are hands,
loosely closed. His eyes are half-shut
or half-open, depending on
how you look at them. The dust-dry ground
beneath him is simply what it is: dirt.
The Congo should be a richer country than most,
that river running through it.
The photo at its edges: white. Thin frame
surrounding his new life.
Research on the Color White
Ropes of pearls
on a woman’s
bare chest;
a lover’s teeth
in the dark
of night. In
childhood, swans
made beautiful endings
and moved
like slow ships.
What wedding dress
has ever lied?
Beginnings are
innocent.
A vine wraps
itself around
the mailbox post,
white with morning.
Fists loosen. A lover
becomes heavy. Snow
sags the roof or
sometimes sinks
into an angel.
Our eyes look away
to spring and lily
of the valley like girls
in clusters of shade.
Varina Davis, 1864, Morning
I meet the sun
with beveled indifference.
Breakfastime, I see bullets
filling all the bowls. Hear cannons in every
clink. Spoons lie atop napkins like wives
going to bed. Jefferson stands at the mirror
adjusting his collar like something bad
is about to happen.
Then it happens.
My only joy is the children— their laughter
like plucking strings of a harp.
I Meet My Child’s Birth Mother
She says, This is what I want, and the embassy
coughs us out like questions. There is traffic
and the sound of bells.
I see her sorrow waiting in deep pools
of collarbone. Her smile is a hook
in my skin or a kind of marriage.
I leave her, return to my blank room
where the moon comes out like faith— cool
and distant and changing its shape.
I escape her like a mine
I fear will collapse. My hope
is dusted off and still.
Yes, this is what I want, she says, and her words
float in air like ash
or a song.
Lure
Before
I took away your