The pregnant are gorged with life. 

Like fat spiders, they unspool offspring

From their bodies—unravelling sticky 

Strings of spiderlings like yarn. 

It is a foul business. 

Arachnids singing out the womb,

Swaddled in fluid and laced with 

Filmy white webbing.


How better it is to birth a poem, 

Whose delivery is quick and painless. 

It slips softly onto the page, 

Shorn of gore and speaking 

Full sentences—an infant virtuoso—

Before crawling cutely to all 

Who will meet it.


It lets itself be held

And impresses meaning onto

Millions of searching souls. 

Unriddle it to become fluent

In a language that is felt, 

Not heard. 


A poem repays its maker in full.

Once wound, it compasses continents,

Converting infidels to Beauty.


Swollen with pride, its mother shines

With the life-glow of accomplishment,

With the crowning glory 

Of immortality. 








the birth of a poem

By Emily Milay

Excerpt from “My Words Untethered: A Collection of Poems”

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