.................................
C-Section Beauty Queen
.................................

Because I look like a jack-o-lantern
the smiling scar with the staple teeth
and my nipples, shining like rosy eyes,
still round from the week-old baby.

Because my body, always pale,
shows stretch marks like blue
highways on a travel map. On my belly
I arrowed, "You are here," and grinned.

Because my tits burst open
with milk when she cries
howling for another drink
her eyes brown like a calf's.

And the drugs they give me
for the pain and the stitches
make my body funny, make me
not care at all. It's like

a spent Christmas package
just opened, just like so,
like a wide, waning moon across my body
the womb like a shallow cup I just poured.

I am beautifully vandalized.

.................................
Alana Merritt Mahaffey
.................................

 
Copyright © Alana Merritt Mahaffey
August 2000

...a poem in this room by meg purcell...
here there be dragons
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