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.