My Adoption Poetry. Day 8 NAM/NAAM 2026

Angsty Adoptee: Me. April 16 Happening Anthology, Mays Publications, Corpus Christi, Texas. Created by Bill Mays. 2026

I started writing poetry in high school. I think I had 1 poem published in my undergrad student literary journal, The Livret But I was the editor.

Cows in Fight: Row 1: Me. Row 2: EAJ, Fred, Mike. Taken at the King Avenue Coffee House, Columbus Ohio by Alan Zak

I kept writing, but it never occurred to me to write about adoption until 1981. By then, I was an “established” poet in the Columbus, Ohio poetry scene. Later I won several awards, was published in some journals, and was a regular at the weekly open mic at Larry’s Bar, and sometimes a featured poet. Eventually, I founded Cows in Flight Poetry Band, featuring myself with my mentor Elizabeth Ann James, Fred Andrle from WOSU-FM who wrote Druid stuff, queer activist Mike Dittmer, various musicians, and anyone we deemed to tag along. Our biggest event was the midnight performance at the Clintonville White Castle, which got national coverage.

In 1980 or 1981, after I received my Original Birth Certificate, which had, to my astonishment, never been sealed, I took my initial trip into AdoptionLand very spaced out. At that same time I was also reading a book on pre-patriarchal Judaism and Canaanite goddesses. Adoption and goddesses oddly enough, meshed in my soul.

Taking a clue from a tradition, discussed, in the book, of women ritualistically counting back their female lineage, I wrote my first adoption poem, The Mother Knot. It included both my mothers (“Marlene, daughter of Dorothy/Daughter of Margaret,” etc. Elizabeth daughter of Jane/ Daughter of Alice” etc. ” I liked it so much I wrote 2 versions– a long one that was more detailed, but I lacked the extensive knowledge I have today of my bio family due to internet genealogy to pull it off well. (I went from being related to no one to over 1000 people). The shorter version, then was a better piece– succinct–that is short–a trait that poetry editors like. The Mother Knot was published in I Name Myself Daughter and It is Good: Poems of the Spirit. The anthology was used in Women’s Studies courses at Ohio State and reportedly other universities. Nobody has heard of it today, and I can’t even find it through Google.

I Name Myself Daughter was fun to write. I thought it was a one-off. I never wrote adoption poetry again until 2023. In fact, I stopped writing poetry altogether around 2002. After a couple of hundred poems about serial killers, gangsters, war, lovers, music, death, and sex I had nothing to say.

Then, after I moved to Corpus Christi, I started up again. The first “new” poem, which had nothing to do with adoption, was published in Texas Bards 2024. I was t encouraged. Things took off from there. So far, I’ve written about 100 poems, and 19 have been published. I try them out mosty at the monthly Say Something open mic at Produce Bar in downtown Corpus, and people seem to like them.

This personal renaissance caused me to re-visit writing adoption poetry. Two have been published in journals

Pruning the Family Tree appears online in Tangled Locks Journal.
The Ancestors are Dangerous was published in Texas Bards 2026 and is available only in print. I’m not going to post the whole thing here, but you get the idea;

The ancestors are dangerous.

They are unsettled.

Demand questions.

Demand accountability.

They demand answers.

Where are our children?

Stolen.

Given to others judged more suitable than we

who brought them forth

line by line for centuries

nurtured our own futures

grew in them.

Why did you erase them from

their history and ours?

The adopted are their ancestors

disinherited

wearing a cloak

invisible from history.

Neary all literary journals require submitted work to be not published previously anywhere, including personal blogs and social media, so I can’t put anything out here. But…

Last year for NAM/NAAM I posted A Response to a Safe Haven Baby Box Meme: Was Shame Even Real? I felt it would not have a good chance at publication since it needed the context that only bastards, birthmoms, and allies would understand, and not the rest of the world. What-in-the-hell-is-a-Safe-Haven-Baby-Box most people would wonder. Context can be explained at a reading but not usually in a publication.

Other adoption poems have been sent out, but it takes months for responses. I’ve been too lazy lately to try. There are thousands of literary/poetry journals out there– a lot very niche–and it’s a lot of work to figure out what is good for where. (What does looking for poems depicting “the human condition” mean? What IS the “human condition?” Poems that “make us think?” Who is “us?” How about poems that “we will never forget.” Who is “we? The only poems I’ve “never forgot” are Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Jail and anything by Edgar Alan Poe. Writing this blog might inspire me to work on it. I would be delighted to write an adoption poem that adoptees will never forget.

Maybe you can write one. We all have thoughts and stories about adoption and ourselves.

Here’s my catalogue of titles