“Shrinking the Uterus,” by Cathy Song
Pig’s feet helps shrink the uterus,
which after birth is a flabby bag of muscle.
Pig’s feet helps get rid of the old blood.
So I am told.
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Poetry
“Ava Gardner Reincarnated as a Magnolia,” by Margaret Atwood
Somehow I never succeeded / in being taken seriously. They made me / wear things that were ruffled: off-the- / shoulder blouses, the tiered skirts / of flouncing Spanish dancers, though I never / quite got the hauteur — I was always tempted / to wink, show instead of a tragic / outstretched neck, a slice of flank.
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“Smoke,” by Eric Rivera
I hide my cigarettes / under abandoned bricks / in the tall grass past / where I don’t cut, / between the siding / and the downspout / where my kids can’t reach, / under potted plants / their mother no longer waters.
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“Poem for George Platt Lynes,” by Wayne Koestenbaum
“George Platt Lynes photographed a naked man, curled / into a snailshell’s infinite regress, and I want / to follow suit, my body a starfish, my skin seized / with a Polaroid purchased on a serious / whim: may I become Lincoln Kirstein or Monroe Wheeler, / wide palms full of fortune, or the sailor / my master of the pick-up / stick picked up and froze in a print / hid in the Kinsey Institute until too recently!”
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“Reading Among the Ruins,” by Lauren K. Alleyne
In the temple’s farthest corner
an olive tree stands,
silver-green leaves like a shawl,
its trunk braided
down into the ancient earth:
You are witnessed by it.
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“Five O’Clock, January 2003,” by Adrienne Rich
“On cliffs above a beach / luxuriant in low tide after storms / littered with driftwood hurled and piled and / humanly arranged in fantastic / installations and beyond”
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“In the Beginning,” by Alice Fulton
“This minute my small toes are shrinking / of their own accord. I have no say / whatsoever. Blame it on buoyancy, / without which, rambunctious and passive / as a beachball on the breakers, I / never would have bobbled here. The wild green groans / by which I lived before language / now gesture and have at me / only in dreams.”
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“Days of 2015,” by Christopher Bakken
We seized the night and shook it till it broke, / so time and bottles and most of our shoes / spilled from its breaking—and music gushed too: / Paris and Nikos relentless till five. // Blame them for this minefield of broken glass, / our unreasonable outbursts of joy. / Someone danced until his knees were bleeding. / Someone said she had fractured her being.
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“Letter in the New Year,” by Donald Hall
“Do you remember our first / January at Eagle Pond, / the coldest in a century? / It dropped to thirty-eight below— / with no furnace, no storm / windows or insulation. / We sat reading or writing / in our two big chairs, either / side of the Glenwood, / and made love on the floor / with the stove open and roaring. / You were twenty-eight. / If someone had told us then / you would die in nineteen years, / would it have sounded / like almost enough time?”
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“December Dawn” by Piero Bigongiari
Eye, a stone become blood, / late from the eye of God, / plummets bird-like on the riverbed. / Does it pierce the light or create it? What does it expect / in its falling–from its falling? Perhaps / it sees something, searches for something in sleep among the / flowers, / disturbed by its arrival, poor river-flowers, rust-colored umbels / under a dream-rain that foresees the future.
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