I think I’m so close to being clear.
One day I’m a white-capped nun, the next
tomato-red, silk ribbon red.
One day, my body is a well-oiled machine,
no snaps or weird creaks. The next day my hips
a museum of pain: little wooden stocks lock the femur
into bent positions, the Heretic’s Fork prick the pubis bone.
The days have names: Light, Heavy, Spotting.
I pray to the Period Goddess to please let me go,
release me from her punishing grip—her forearm
locked tight around my uterus. How strange
to want part of my body to stop its work—
Dear Uterus, you’ve done enough, retire soon.
I hold a funeral for my ovaries, place two
stones in a box, nestle then in newly dug dirt.
But the cramps still trample on my pelvic ground.
Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Gyroscope, Crab Creek Review (Poetry Finalist 2017), DMQ Review, Hospital Drive (Contest Runner-Up 2017), Sou’wester, Spillway, Redactions, Radar Poetry, Verse Wisconsin. Her chapbooks, Her Vena Amoris (Red Bird Chapbooks), and “Self-Portraits” in Ides (Silver Birch Press) are available. Her manuscript, An Accidental Species, was a finalist in the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry. She was winner of a scholarship to Poets on the Coast and a recipient of a Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Latest posts by Carol Berg (see all)
- Perimenopausal - 27th February 2023
- Love Poem to an Amaryllis - 2nd December 2022