Cross-Country Hydatidiform
Passing thoughts: Knife first, then turtle shell.
Brown cow rubs white face against a fence.
Woman, almost middle aged and ill
situated there as any oil well
in nameless green rurality, both dense
and spare: if not lost, she is alone
for words among the cluster trees that leave
her feather-tongued and prickly still.
Inside her, child-shaped cancer cells,
seedlings borne of eager sperm, cleave
her womb, like past from future, sown
in optimism, cast in brume. Grieve
the unnamed subject quickly thrust
from loam, pronounce it loud until
the road gets quieter in Arkansas
than Oklahoma. Heifers wait like stone
behind another fence, once broken
during calving. Yellow school bus
disappears from rear view window. Sense
absence splitting into surplus
in the uterus. Remember even
turtle shells are made of keratin and bone.
Thoughts that linger: We are only in relation
to the ocean. Trees we’ve never known
grow wide their shadows. All of us
make do with language not our own.
Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, Nimrod, and other literary journals and has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. She is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and previously worked as a tenured professor of English in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey. Find her on social media @maraleegrayson.
