April 12: My Perimenopausal Body Cistern Disappointing How Surprising
Martha
My Perimenopausal Body Cistern Disappointing How Surprising
Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Bled all day. Stopped bleeding. Bled some more.
Went to the doctor who reached inside the woman
body I try to live with: make peace with: but also ignore.
Sad tenant, my uterus. One day the tenant turns
out to be the landlord. All day I wonder what
it means, a clock I know as well as I know anything
but also never wanted. And also won’t give up.
In the history of my light body it will show I could
have been another. The shots, the surgeon’s
blade. That freedom. But I hold on. Not out of fear.
Well maybe, but also: this body I fought for. Timid
skin sack that grew into a kind of magnificence I’d
not expected. I tie my bow tie around my neck that’s not
quite the neck I want. But still: the neck survived:
hours on the floor begging for my life: bent
head crying in the bathroom: bent head walking
by the boys yelling, hog and dog and ugly as an animal.
It’s confusing. I protect the breasts that I live without
in my mind’s eye. I look for hours
at men’s trousers and kimonos and bleed all day.
My mind says: take it out. And though
it’s one step closer to one true self I wanted, also
I’d miss it in ways I can’t explain. Burnt off scroll.
I’m a mirror of a mirror. When I was eight at daycare
my friends pulled me aside to talk about a “sex change”:
all of us in our Catholic uniforms: Meg, Emily,
Nadine, and Brian who got kicked out because of me.
That’s later in the story. We drew me in the sand.
We planned and wondered how much it cost
to be another body. But now? I know my body.
I pull up my pants and feel the lack of one thing
as the muffin top reminds me of the persistence
of another. Me who’s with me always.
This pillow that looked over me. Pillow
of skin and fat that I’d call Rubenesque.
It tried its best. To cover me. So I worry over it.
Strange companion. This body that covers me.
And bleeds all day without ceasing. I say, Come on.
I say, Stop. Like I used to when I’d get too scared
of one thing or another. God comes back
to find me in the most confounding ways.
Me and my body. Who are often not the same.
----
Also:
+ Insomnia, Linda Pastan
+ On the Origin of Trans Femmes, Kai Cheng Thom
+ from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich
+ wishes for sons, Lucille Clifton
More Gabrielle Calvocoressi:
+ At Last the New Arriving
+ Hammond B3 Organ Cistern
+ Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you.
Set sail for the distant horizons of poems from:
2025: Instead of Depression, Andrea Gibson
2024: A Small Psalm, Catherine Wing
2023: How to Do Absolutely Nothing, Barbara Kingsolver
2022: Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you., Gabrielle Calvocoressi
2021: I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store, Eve L. Ewing
2020: Day Beginning with Seeing the International Space Station And a Full Moon Over the Gulf of Mexico and All its Invisible Fishes, Jane Hirshfield
2019: Flores Woman, Tracy K. Smith
2018: The Universe as Primal Scream, Tracy K. Smith
2017: Soul, David Ferry
2016: Turkeys, Galway Kinnell
2015: He Said Turn Here, Dean Young
2014: I Don’t Miss It, Tracy K. Smith
2013: Hotel Orpheus, Jason Myers
2012: Emily Dickinson’s To-Do List, Andrea Carlisle
2011: Now That I Am in Madrid and Can Think, Frank O’Hara
2010: The Impossible Marriage, Donald Hall
2009: The Rider, Naomi Shihab Nye
2008: from Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, John Berryman
2007: This Heavy Craft, P.K. Page
2006: Late Ripeness, Czeslaw Milosz
2005: A Martian Sends A Postcard Home, Craig Raine