Junkyard

I am out with my lantern salvaging scraps from the junk-

yard where I have been admitted for Dilation

& Curettage to purge my miscarried poems.

(Dear Sensitivity Reader: before you get your knickers

in a knot, I ask that you indulge me this parallel—

I have lived experience of both kinds of losses.)

Some don’t require much hoovering at all—their grip

not yet fastened to the lining of my womanhood.

They shed themselves like self-identified waste

unceremoniously flushed down the toilet.

.

Please let the next one stick, I think to myself, so frightened

of jinxing things that my telekinetic whisper becomes

a fervent prayer by a desperate atheist.

.

People ask how my next book is coming along.

Truth is, I haven’t been able to conceive.

Which is why I find myself

in the middle of the night

in the middle of this junkyard

with my lantern and rubber gloves

plumbing elbow deep into the breeding

ground of this maggot-infested tissue

in the vacuous hope I may find

enough viable matter

to implant in my barren womb

praying this one will take

root and propagate.