Abstract
I wrote the poems that comprise this work after reading a news article about the changing expectations of remote work and childcare. The article is ostensibly about negotiating the terms and expectations of remote work, yet it also read to me like a manual of maternal erasure. The message quickly evolves into making first care-work and then mothers disappear. The poems span from free verse, to limerick, to villanelle, concluding with a poem that, as its title announces, is not a poem at all. All are meant to speak(back) to discourses around mothering, care, and labor in the United States.
Introduction
I think I encountered Smith and Green’s (2021) Bloomberg Law article “Say Goodbye to the Toddler Stars of the Pandemic Office Zoom” while browsing Facebook though I cannot entirely remember. I might have been in bed with my three children and the dog crowded in with me yet again. (How could I kick them out during pandemic times, I’d think, curling my legs up, trying to give them their space.) It could have just as easily been sometime during the workday, whatever that meant, or during a quick glance down at the phone while waiting anxiously in line at the grocery store. What I do recall vividly is my response—a mix of rage and grief that surprised me. In year three of the Covid-19 pandemic, I find the energy required for vehemence somewhat hard to come by and rarely spontaneous. But there I was, somewhere, at some time, suddenly furious.
The article, which is ostensibly about negotiating the terms and expectations of remote work, also read to me like a manual of maternal erasure. The message, which starts off as hide the children, quickly evolves into making first care-work and then mothers disappear. At this point, it feels almost cliché to point out the insidiousness of individual culpability for structural failure (e.g., if we hide/outsource/make invisible our caretaking, no institutions must change). I also recognize that those of us, like myself, who get to fret about what to do about childcare while we work remotely are starting from a highly privileged positionality.
Yet, to me the matter is not just of invisibility, but of being made invisible, (re)supplanted by a hegemonic vision of labor. To me this unites us mothers. We are not missing; we are being pushed out.
As Sandra L. Faulkner notes in her excellent piece linking feminism and poetry, “poetry can not only show embodiment, it can be an embodied experience” (Faulkner, 2018, p. 103). I agree and would add that poetic forms are like skeletons filled out and themselves embodied by the accompanying text. What follows is a work that is representative of my own embodiment as a working mother, that I hope in its delivery creates not just embodied experiences, but through the intentional use of specific poetic forms, also itself embodies a space in the continuing discourse around mothering, care, and labor in the United States. The poems that comprise this piece are not optimistic. They are sardonic and angry and resigned. But they persist in their space-taking. They will not be hidden away.
A Bit More on the Poems
I wrote the first piece in the series as a kind of citation in verse. The work uses the language from the original article a way of both distilling and illuminating my sense-making and setting the tone for the rest of the poems that follow. While the poetic form is free verse, the message is anything but, as the poem concludes with an awakening that is hardly transformative.
The limerick form centers the “toddler stars” (re)presented by the article, creating a child-like (but certainly not innocent) vision of the issue at hand. The problem of the global pandemic, taunts the poem, is “your kids” and, by extension, motherhood and its child-related requirements.
Moving from limerick to villanelle maintains a kind of sing-song tone (as befits the form, per Chairetakis, 1993) that nods at the rage centered in Dylan Thompson’s (n.d.) famous piece and is also informed by Jill Falzoi’s (2002) Villanelle which concludes with the line “what form of you remains.” Kane (2003) argues that the villanelle is at once fiction and fact—while stories of its historical roots as Renaissance form appear to be apocryphal, the steadfast belief in its own mythology has cemented its place in the “genuine” (Kane, 2003, p. 441). Thus, the villanelle as a poetic form is representative of truth-making that insists itself into being, much like holding mothers accountable for their own (in this poem) “reckless” visibility.
The final piece is, as the title suggests, not a poem at all. Resisting artistic rendering or lyricism, instead this work contains a vague pronouncement. Is there a threat lurking here? It seems like it, in part because of how (and from whom) the message is delivered, but it’s hard to know how to proceed. Indeed.
Poems
Bringing the realities of childcare into Employers’ view A potential equalizer? A very common misperception. We were letting you get away with Working and watching children who were Far from optimal Distractions Opting out Stepping out Wanting and needing That’s not the way you should be working Play a much smaller role Never show somebody (women working) (working mothers) With a baby on their lap Honor the professionalism Treat a job like a job and Tighten up You can’t expect the latitude To be a nanny Someone else will take care Of the kids A rude awakening: Return to old norms was Inevitable.
There once was a global pandemic Which made your “work lives” feel hectic The problem’s your kids And all of their needs It’s no wonder you feel so distracted.
The children were so unexpected when seen and heard on the screen and oh those mothers: so reckless what has happened to etiquette and the honor of work-ing the children were so unexpected I’ll tell you it’s hardly professional no matter the sense of upheaval and oh those mothers: so reckless babies on laps and the rest of it portend a future to fear the children were so unexpected you see we’ve gotten too flexible the focus must stay on career and oh those mothers: so reckless we cannot promote the perception that caring and working are equal the children were so unexpected and oh those mothers: so reckless
Memorandum TO: Workers FROM: Capitalism CC: White supremacy, Patriarchy, Imperialism BCC: Empire DATE: Then and/as now SUBJECT: Employment, etc. Attention Mothers: We were letting you get away with it.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
