My ovaries beat like a heart,
\npinhead egg crates are tiny satellites,
\nfloat so slight, we cannot feel the work,
\nwhat lived in our mothers now lives in us.
\nA shallow panic attack every month,
\nred disco sound with all the ladies\u2014
\nwe throw our fallopian tubes in the air,
\ntiny arms that just don’t care.
\n
\nMy uterus is the mothership,
\nwhere to land, get a quick bite, grow a human,
\nit happens in stages and we count the weeks,
\nwe swell on the outside, a walking reminder,
\nof sex, of uneasiness.
\nMen, sweaty in suits, they legislate babies
\nwhile they sit as barren spinsters,
\nman cat ladies in tight knit sweaters.
\n
\nMy vagina, a hurricane we rarely see,
\nwe feel it’s weather, I capitalize Vagina,
\nthe passage into the world,
\nit opens like a time portal,
\nyou can expect miracles,
\nthe child slips out,
\nclothed in the nothing that comes
\nbefore everything.
\n
\n <\/p>\n
Sarah Lilius lives in Arlington, VA. She is the author of The Heart Factory<\/em> (Black Cat Moon Press, 2016) and What Becomes Within<\/em> (ELJ Publications, 2014). Her work can most recently be found in Flapperhouse, Fourth & Sycamore,<\/em> and Drunk Monkeys<\/em>. Check out her website, sarahlilius.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My ovaries beat like a heart, pinhead egg crates are tiny satellites, float so slight, we cannot feel the work, what lived in our mothers now lives in us. A shallow panic attack every month, red disco sound with all the ladies\u2014 we throw our fallopian tubes in the air, tiny arms that just don’t [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[209],"class_list":["post-4124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-wet-iris-by-pamela-hughes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4124"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4135,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4124\/revisions\/4135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}