Unexpected
They wheeled my mother
to the table under the lights,
sliced her open only to find
in her womb,
a furled girl
the size of a damson
plum, translucent eyelids
too fragile to block
the blinding white.
The doctors pinched
my mother’s flaps of skin
together, stitched a hasty row
of x’s, washed their hands
of it all, left
me to swirl
in the murky sac,
heartbeat as faint
as a foxglove’s bell.
Previously in The Examined Life Journal
and forthcoming in Drumskin and Bones,
from Salmon Poetry (Ireland) 2021
They wheeled my mother
to the table under the lights,
sliced her open only to find
in her womb,
a furled girl
the size of a damson
plum, translucent eyelids
too fragile to block
the blinding white.
The doctors pinched
my mother’s flaps of skin
together, stitched a hasty row
of x’s, washed their hands
of it all, left
me to swirl
in the murky sac,
heartbeat as faint
as a foxglove’s bell.
Previously in The Examined Life Journal
and forthcoming in Drumskin and Bones,
from Salmon Poetry (Ireland) 2021
LINKS to ONLINE POEMS
"To My Parents"
The Shore
Issue 5: Spring 2020
"Musician's Focal Dystonia"
JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association
May 16, 2017
"Bodies Revealed Exhibition"
Intima
May 2017
"Pockets" and "Bones"
Sheila-Na-Gig
March 2020
"Two-Way Mirror"
West Texas Literary Review 2018
"What to Do About Winter (Broadside: art by Katie Nealis)
The Michigan Poet
"To the Story Girl"
Dunes Review 2017
"Duet"
Dunes Review 2017
Link to Interview with Joanna White
Brilliant Books in conjunction with Dunes Review
"Musician's Focal Dystonia Letters"
Hospital Drive 2017
"Masks"
KYSO Flash
Winter 2015
What the Hummingbirds Seek
We forked left along the river, hiked
to a wooden bridge. Up the arc, we drummed
the boards with brown-caked shoes, crossed over
to a place I must have been before; we came
into the scent of bees. You can't smell bees,
you said, but I was sure; sweet hugged us
like a fog. Vines twisted up through slatted fences,
teemed with spikey trumpets, cream
and apricot, honeysuckle throbbing.
I reached up to pluck a flower, pinched
the bud from the narrow end. Taste it, I said,
drawing out the wiry style, globe of nectar
dotting the i––
touched it to your tongue.
Previously in The MacGuffin
and forthcoming in Drumskin and Bones,
from Salmon Poetry (Ireland) 2021