Afterbirth

With unflinching concision, Rebecca Morton's debut collection Afterbirth details her family's experience in the foster care system. Morton invites the reader to inhabit with her the intimate spaces of parenting, and asks us to reexamine our own expectations around family-building and mothering. With each sensory moment-"deep red, suckered to the umbilical cord, and pulsing"-Afterbirth insists grief and love, trauma and joy, are held in the body.