Rebecca Dunham is a member of the senior poetry staff at The Missouri Review, and is pursuing her PhD in Poetry at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Elixir. Saint Anne to Her Daughter Rebecca Dunham            Madonna and Saint Anne, Da Vinci It will not work. He’ll never fold back into you, body curled tight, a kitten in sleep. He leans— seems always to lean—away. Everything you do pulls death, thick & woolly, closer to your emptied flesh. There is room. Skin sags your shrunken belly. Remember: there is always room now for death to clamber into your lap, heavy as a child & bleating. It’s in your weight on my legs. The last prickings of sensation fade, numb as when you first emerged, smudged with blood & vernix. I knew: the fingers tipped with blue.