INSIDE ME ARE ICEBERGS THAT MAKE IT HARD TO DANCE
How’s your uterus? she asks, as if doctors foraging to unearth
my fertility is haha-worthy. Here’s what’s best avoided———
the knife to my pelvis, the scalpel to my tubes, the gas pumped
till my abs were armour that offered no Joan of Arc protection.
Nobody wants details on the sensation of gifting your uterus to
science in the hope of having a boy who dances with his hips,
has sex some day with a girl with bangs, hides cigarettes since
I need him to live forever and he knows it, pretends (just for me)
he’s eternal. Mama, remember the day you had no boy ————
These days, babies drop from pecan trees at dusk. Friends sprout
offspring like summer storms: God, they laugh, we weren’t even
trying. The nearness of me makes others nervous: We’ve started
trying, just in case. In his shed, Dad discovers a bag of baby
wraps, the afterglow of my fertile sibling’s summer storms:
You still want this? As I pass a herd of wild buffalo mamas
in the Tetons, who protect their babies with bowed heads,
I reflect on the buffalo wraps I gave every baby ever born.
God, y’all travel so much, she says, as if Wyoming makes
up for greys and wondering who’ll die first: me or my man.
I search the word barren. I’m some kind of mother earth—
some kind of farmer’s crop gone wrong. Tomorrow, a friend
will give birth, ask if I’m ok. Tomorrow, I’ll wash the blood
between my legs down the drain. Tomorrow, I’ll fertilise the
mother who eats her babies and yet still has so many to spare.