“Five more minutes”
became forty five
no wonder
the drugs wore off
my hollow belly
a clothes washer full
of razor blades on rinse
I still don’t want
to leave my bed
cuz Advil’s in Arabia
but it’s warm
down in Belize
Elysium dreams placebos
purring me to burrow
in the sweet soft
Tropic of Comforter
curiously chewing
on my pain.

So on the 33rd day of my cycle I built three terrariums...     

Terrarium Poem

Racing at infertility
I urgently buy plants
research hot obsessing
what survives a black thumb
what won’t kill a black cat
She’s too cute
            to eat with sense
I’m too cute
            to want a child
so I redesign, I nest
blood urgency mistaken
as green life, cat life,
love life fills my womb
and thirteen possible models
of the same exact toilet
I faint from art deco
encaustic cement tiles
while my cranky cycle
defies arithmetic
but if the plant is spiky
and lives in a jar
safe from the black thumb
safe from the black cat
if the plant is spiky
can it draw my lost blood
if the plant’s in a jar
can it clean my dead air
how many plants
how many days
in this black expanse
of dwindling tides and time
my creative grand gestation
is beautiful perfected
space
to be alone.


THRILLED this poem will appear in S/tick's upcoming issue, 4.2  www.dontdiepress.org/stickmag/