A Place of Precariousness
On the desk
sits a picture of my excised uterus,
a mess that says so little
about its fibers, the properties.
I’ve tried to spend time with the image every afternoon,
convincing myself that this sacrificial lump
was once attached to my belly.
Its smooth, glistening surface
slipped away in a few short hours of surgery.
Hereafter, there will be a gentleness.
I still feel twinges in my abdomen,
fatigue when I slow down.
It’s hard to lash out against certain outcomes:
wounds aren’t dikes,
they don’t cradle,
don’t regress.
Maybe I’ll reproduce the image on a glossy postcard
and give it away to my friends.
On the back I’ll write:
“pyriform uterine body of 7 x 6 centimeters,
in which fibromatosis was diagnosed
adenomyosis and proliferative endometrium,
extracted from Jacqueline Goldberg,
on Tuesday February 21 of the year 2006.”
Let it be seen.
Admired.
Detested.
The compliant stubble matters to me.
It’s an essential portrait,
a port of origin without end.
My old maw.
State of Exile
There is a string of emancipated verbs, without sky.
Everything is mine. The pestilent and lightweight things.
I kneaded it all, bit it all, cradled it.
Mine are the inaccuracies,
the mud doesn’t subside,
threads of blood coagulate the home.
Mine is whatever despoils,
sap of one greedy afternoon,
crumbling bones in the womb.
I carry minutiae to my disgust, to my exile.
The losses won’t pull the evil out of me,
they won’t make me generous or punctual.
If I go I will carry everything,
assemble fear in another port,
sully myself for new hope.
The Dying Man Summons Us
the dying man summons us,
to recapitulate his life
forced as he is
to breathe for himself until the end
his confession is a second hand one
lacks the will
to conceal certain loyalties
in the vastness of farewells
truth is always a scandal
Translated by Consuelo Méndez, with William Blair
