SARA SAYS SHE’S HAVING HER BREASTS REMOVED
Our child is cutting off body parts –
and will only stop, she says, when she gets to her
her, her true they.
I picture somersaulting stumps
in slow tumble. Band-aided elbows, fingers
in pink plastic princess rings, catcher-tight thighs,
tattooed forearms, wrists fleeced
with whispery blond hairs spinning
in acrobatic arcs.
I am a panting dog of a parent, running
to retrieve so many arms, legs, lips,
breasts, million nipples.
Sara laughs when I slip on the blood,
calls it dancing.
_______________________________________________________________________
MICHAEL MARK‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Arkansas International, Los Angeles Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Rattle, The New York Times, The Sun, Poetry Daily, Waxwing and The Poetry Foundation‘s American Life in Poetry Series and other nice places. You can find more about him and his work here.
_______________________________________________________________________
Read more by Michael Mark:
Another poem in B O D Y
Poem in Rattle
Poem at the Poetry Foundation
Poem in The Sun Magazine