When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished. –Czeslaw Milosz
Words from a man I want to make
my husband: I think you should go
for the biggest thing you can think of—
I go for a walk under old growth
Sitka spruce— look at the ground—
try to imagine all the biggest things
I can imagine— Jenny’s freshly shaved
thighs— baked ziti I made and ate
by myself for a week—
But the biggest thing I can think of is my own
shrunken ovary, jammed— inappropriate
angle into my overgrown basketweave
uterine tissue— sick with picturing,
cramps ripple my pelvis—
pieces of my lining come apart
like a dry rotted shoe pulled out
a long locked closet— How many untouched
Vilnius bricks pave the streets a man not
my grandfather wrote his whole life over—
Interstate 10, where it swells to twenty-six
lanes, in the biggest city in the biggest contiguous
state— It doesn’t matter if the ovary can do anything
in its red nest. But if it could— do anything— I would
want it to touch itself—
Burdock leaves in childhood like a hat
I would wear and discard in the creek limbing off
the Biała River— My uncle takes in
my ire over how small I am
in this family— Says: I think you should not
let this torture you—
I walk all the way to the bay so big
I pretend it is Pacific— not a pool
attached to a pool attached to a strait
that feeds the ocean— What kinds of pits
are a similar size to my driest ovary?
And what do those pits fit.
I have more than I know
what to do with— Over three square miles
of one mushroom, becoming itself— irregular
granny squares, thousands— wetter than anything
in outer space— fastened to the forest floor,
honey fungus seeping white rot
through the holes— Hypergiant UY Scuti could fit
five billion Suns— One baby is all I want,
a world to take— the one I am—
But the biggest thing I can think of is not on its way—
What is? The shocking single hair
I will pluck off my menopausal jaw,
longer than any hair I will ever grow— Bored,
waiting to make him my husband— For the baby
is what? A pit
to throw crows down—
