Portside

Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. –1984

The goal was a new generation 
of children trained as zealots & spies, 
with no connection 
but to the nation. The goal was 
promulgation of an idea 
& for this they would need fetuses, 
an army of them. Of course, 
they’d also need sterilization, plus
strategic starvation & bombings 
for managing the Prole population.

But first & foremost, fetuses, 
hence the Procreation Obligation. 
No matter if women got wrung out 
like washrags, losing teeth & hair.
No matter some would conceive 
after rape & some could, or would 
certainly, die. No matter some 
might not want to be brood mares. 
Duty was duty & the risks did not 
much affect the men in charge.

The mission was procreation. 
Birth control was immoral & you 
had to choose between it & food. 
Abortion was unthinkable then, seen 
by Big Brother (Big Sister might 
quibble) as abomination. Also, illegal, 
a crime to get one, or help someone 
get one, let alone—even to save 
the mother’s life—perform one. 
Like it is here, in some states, now. 

Rebecca Foust’s books include YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR: Love Poems (Backbone Press 2024) and ONLY (Four Way Books 2022).  Her poems won the 2024 James Dickey Prize and the Telluride Institute’s Fischer prize, and in recent years, the New Ohio Review, Pablo Neruda, James Hearst, and Poetry International prizes. She divides her time between Marin County, CA, and Minnesota.