Green Linden Press

Hysteroscopy


After the ultrasound probe sent to search
for the cause of this raft of blood, ceaseless
weeks of red on my thighs, the doctor sighs,
lists the fibroids, the thickened walls, the growths
that may or may not be worth worrying
about. His catalog ends with two words—
unremarkable ovaries—that call
forth all my unhatched plans. The diagram
on the wall saws me in half, vertical
axis, organ draped over the bladder
as if in slumber. This pastel portrait,
all pallid pink viscera and muted
gold skin, is a sunset that invites me
in, informs me this place in which all lives
are made is scarcely the length of my fuck
you finger, barely the width of my wrist.
Uninhabited, the whole shebang—from
fundus to cervix—is small as my heart,
my fist. The doctor escorts me back to
this room, this next process in which, to view
its lining more clearly, he fills my cave
with saline, like a water balloon. How
calm I remain on the table, how still
for the scope that enters my not-a-womb.
He asks me to rate my pain on a scale
on which I place a heavy thumb, tip it
low as a dull headache, as if I’m too
tough for suffering, too butch for distress.
I hold my breath despite his reminders
to relax. I refuse the stronger meds,
the knockout gas. I want to be awake
for this moment when I become a home
to liquid and light, when I am aglow.
In those wilds beyond my parted legs, no
matter what the doctor finds, a lantern
now shines, limns the night inside me with stars.
Whatever haunts this dark, may it step forth
into this circle of fire, lured by warmth,
may it come forward from the murk, its stark
silhouette against this blaze. At long last
I will know its name, call it close enough
to glimpse its tender face amidst the flames.

That the ones you grieve may be grieving you

—Adrienne Maree Brown

Dear mostly forgiven, dear have not heard
from in twenty years, dear where have you gone?
dear how have you been? dear turns out you live

in Florida, dear turns out you’re still with him,
dear despite the gun he once held to your head,
now he changes your bedpan, now he’s known you

longer than I did, through the seizures and the stroke,
through your kidneys gone to shit, now he’s beside you
in hospice and has not told you that you’re dying,

but you’re dying, dear one who once woke me in the night
to ask, do you love me? will you stay?—where did you think
I would have fled? dear I cannot call on the phone, dear

cannot hear your voice through the line, remind me one last time
how you formed me in the hollows of your body, how you
imagined me and then made me true, matter and fact, dear

when you begged me to remain
with you forever, I said,
yes, yes. It was not an act.

***

Dear child I have only known as a child,
never grown, I have stalked you through ether
to learn your public face, the one that glows,

graces my screen and cannot be the same one
you scrub clean each night the way I taught you, warm
washcloth and plain soap. Dear who I hoped for, dear

wanted so much, dear I missed your touch, miss it more
now that I’m confined to bed—how you once crawled in,
rested your head on my pillow so close I could

dream you back into my body. Dear I’m not sorry
I stayed with him, only that you made me choose. I did
not know I could lose a child so many times but each

year your birthday is a disappearance, and I am both
magician and trick. Dear name slipped from the tip of my tongue,
I cannot recall what doll you fussed over, what book you

loved best, but I remember
what you felt like, mouth on my
breast as I fed you, kept you.

Jennifer Perrine’s newest book of poetry, Again, is forthcoming from Airlie Press in September 2020. Jennifer’s previous books include No Confession, No Mass (winner of the Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize); In the Human Zoo; and The Body Is No Machine. Jennifer’s recent poetry appears in Rattle, The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, and in the Broadsided Press feature, “A Sense of Home.” Jennifer lives in Portland, Oregon.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2020