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an erasure from the history section of the Anglican Trust for Women and Children’s website
a constant danger—
people who desire
exceptional experience
in controlling girls
nature and scope of work
and milk
Copyright © 2019 Chloe Honum. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Winter 2019.
The man has chosen
that he wants his ashes scattered
from the end of the pier
where he used to fish with his buddies.
They’d sit on overturned paint buckets.
Sometimes the waves gusted up
In 1964, Maggie Wilkinson gave birth to a baby girl at St. Mary’s Home for Unwed Mothers in Auckland. Against her will, her daughter was immediately taken and given to a married couple to adopt. In her 2016 petition urging the New Zealand government to conduct an inquiry into the decades-long practice of forced adoption, she points out that the history section of the Anglican Trust for Women and Children’s website does not mention St. Mary’s Home for Unwed Mothers. She asks: “Do they believe by erasing it from their history that it will go away? That the evil will fade?"
It’s dusk on a Tuesday in June. A hot wind
bears down and east. In my room, a stranger’s
hairclip lies like a gilded insect beside the sink.
Hours later, it’s still dusk; it will be dusk all night.
Last month, I cut the masking tape from a box my mother left