Cooking Breakfast Sausage

On the occasion of my son,
just nine and leaving home.

I undo the tight plastic wrap
from the sticky Styrofoam tray,

lie each one down by hand
and examine its milky casing.

He is the only one beside me
who likes these links, my last baby,

and I sneak two in my mouth
as they brown and sizzle.

But this morning as I flip
each pink speckled thing

in the cast iron skillet
I see not tubes of meat,

but babies -- rows and rows
of them, swaddled and burning.

Cindy Milwe is a writer and teacher who lives in Venice, CA with her husband and three children. Her work has been published in many journals and magazines, including 5 AM, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry East, Poet Lore, The William and Mary Review, Flyway, Talking River Review, and The Georgetown Review, among others. She also has poems in two anthologies: Another City: Writing from Los Angeles (City Lights, 2001) and Changing Harm to Harmony: The Bullies and Bystanders Project (Marin Poetry Center Press, 2015). Her first full-length collection, Salvage, was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2022.