This is a powerful story - the themes of loss and conflict within a culture are dealt with from a sensitive 1st person narrative point of view. The simple writing style reflects the youth of the narrator / mother and is pleasing to read.
You could leave more for the reader to construct... meaning, show, don't tell the emotions and some of the action. It is totally possible for the reader to work out what is going on from the fragmented whispers 'drown in milk... say it was still born', so repeating this is unnecessary. The last paragraph also does too much telling and not enough showing for my liking. It links with the title, but could also reacknowledge information from the first paragraph, to bring it back to the 'present reality'.
You might like to also play around with the structure a little bit. Consider how the memory works... do you remember things in strict chronological order? are memories stimulated by the act of remembering, or do they have other triggers such as smells, sounds? Since this is essentially a story recalling an event, albeit a traumatic one, perhaps adding some of the description of smells and sounds as memory triggers rather than just as part of the memory would help. Also trying an anti-linear structure (non-chronologically ordered story) might improve the overall feel of this piece- try starting with some action, then adding background description or information, development of the action, climax of the conflict followed by an ending, perhaps much further forward in time.
Congratulations on your poem. It is great that you have a strong theme running throughout - this really gives a focus for your writing. I found the poem in parentheses an interesting structural idea, but would like to know why you chose to do this - I think it could be developed even further if there existed perhaps a sense of irony or paradox in the use of such a device. If you want to consider how future poetry could grow or evolve for you, then have a think about the following points:
Your poetry should consist of theme, content, language and format. You have obviously got a good grasp of what you wanted to do with theme and format, so next time try concentrating on what you want to say or reveal about the theme and how you are going to achieve this through use of language. Sometimes, simple images can be very powerful, but try to avoid cliches as these undermine the strength of effect you are trying to achieve. Keep up the good work!
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