Afraid New World

 There was no room for emergency

in the emergency room

so she settled into her car

as life emerged from her,

and then life left

her infant, too.

What were the doctors supposed to do?

If you said first, no harm

then no harm done,

but that math isn't fooling

anyone. It's attention diverted

from the harm of inaction

when fear has gained traction

and pro-life is merely

forced birth,

and such births will happen anyhow

and that the baby died doesn't matter

to the screamers now-

having happened in a car

not a clinic.

Call me a cynic, but if you call this 

an act of God, or

an act of fate,

I would say no--it was the state

that barred the door

that tied the hands

that choked the heart

that buried the child, 

all mummified in red tape. 

Tape as red as blood. 

Her Body: Graveyard

The first time at twenty-five
I felt the child inside me alive
until the cramp and blood--
the violent ending,
of my unsung son.

And the second time,
she barely registered--
a missed period, a test,
and I guessed,
maybe yes--this time
I'd fight my biology.
But I fought nausea
and in tears knew
how quickly
she
ceased to be.

My hard-fought fertility
has taken me from
the bed to the ER
to doctors and the spare
couch where I have sat,
paging through unaffordable options,
to have
just one, adorable child.

So tell me,
when this one dies,
if it dies, under my heart,
when do I start to heal--

with a surgical finish
and a promise that we will meet again?
Or will some
jumped up motherfucker
make me leave his little
bones
joined in me until the
rush of
thankless labor
some days off
let me unburden the ghost
of another child I did not have?

Make my heart a
stone,
and inscribe there
their names unwritten
for what your laws will make
of my potters' womb.

A monument to death in me.
My life a tomb
for your
purity.


After this.

Her Body Migrant

They wanted her
here--
there,
back down,
thirteen,
no hope,
prisoner
used, traded.
Tool.

Dreams:
nightmares only.
Freedom denied
and penetration
guaranteed.
Stolen life
a story
of transit-points
and bargains
and sometimes,

she was the chip.

This seed
that tastes like shame

holds a body in bounds,

and would you dare bargain for her
freedom with indifference to her
life--and

not call this thing "rape"?

Make her body the place
you sink in your
staff and wave your
merry flag? A fish and a cross?

Fuck yourself.

Her body is her proof.
Let her have her freedom.

And leave your beady little conscience
to its worrying stones.
She bore her cross
why should she bear
a crown of thorns?

Her body is not your business to shame
but the burden you
need
to know.

And if you do not dare--
speak no more of her fate
anywhere,
slink down from your place;
for you have no right to
judge
what you would
not face.
Her body,
and the sanctity of its life.