This poem is about fertility, and it
appears in the new Virginia Quarterly Review.
"The Vulture and The Body."
On my way to the fertility clinic,
I pass five dead animals, first a raccoon with all four paws
to the sky, like he's going to catch whatever bullshit
load falls on him next.
Then a grown coyote, his furred golden body
soft against the white cement lip of the traffic barrier,
trickster no longer, an eye closed to what's coming.
Close to the sign that says "Florence,
y'all," and means I'm near Cincinnati,
but still in the Bluegrass State and close to my exit,
I see three dead deer, all staggered, but together.
And I realize as I speed past in my death machine
that they are a family.
I say something to myself that's in between a prayer
and a curse.
How dare we live on this Earth?
I want to tell my doctor about how we all
hold the duality in our minds, futures entirely
different, footloose or forged.
I want to tell him how lately, it's
enough to be reminded that my body is not just my body,
but that I'm made of old stars, and so it he.
And that last Tuesday, I sat alone in the car
by the post office and just was for a whole hour,
no one knowing how to find me until I got out, the sound
the car door shutting like a gun, and mailed letters,
all of them saying thank you.
But in the clinic, the sonogram wand showing my follicles,
he asks if I have any questions and says,
things are getting exciting.
I want to say, but what about all the dead animals,
the Earth, our trapped bodies?
But he goes quicksilver, and I'm left to pull my panties up
like a big girl.
Sometimes, there's a violent sister inside of me,
and a red ladder that wants to go elsewhere.
I drive home on the other side of the road, going south now.
The white coat has said I'm ready,
and I watch as a vulture crosses over me,
heading toward the carcasses I haven't properly
mourned or even forgiven.
What if, instead of carrying a child,
I am supposed to carry grief.
The great black scavenger flies parallel now,
each of us speeding intently and driven toward what we've
been taught to do with death.