I Swallowed My Gynecologist
I am happy to be opened and giving blood
overlaid with gold like the white of an egg
overlaid with clotted red like a gored glome.
Is there jungle down there?
Snared and peeling
The hue of hyps
and bloodhound hymans
Do I have teeth?
What do you see?
Joubts and jags in my uterine wall
the joint of my thigh
two jawed
half full.
Some metal probe has slipped
I reach inside
grab a gun from my uterus
boom click
goes my male gynecologist.
My body has blown
a hole in his left eye
I am stretching
like a slinky wrapped round a playroom
like a ribbon
opening
I feel nothing but pop rocks.
I do what anyone does
detach unguild, swallow
Separate.
I wonder if this is why Dad faints
when they stick needles in his arm-
because he has never given
his whole life over.
Because he never will.
He sticks another one in me
I will wear bloody diapers forever.
Walk into walmart and give birth at the gun section
hold a pistol to any man
attempting to look beneath
“Your womb has teeth”
I scream
I want never to be full like a man
I want always to be emptied,
chasing silver spool across
the floor-
Spirits and Stray Cats
A stray cat arrives
before bedtime,
striped and gloomy,
gobbling glass and
crying to midwest spirits
for canned tuna.
When it arrives
he does not trust it, like
some torah scripture the rabbi gives you
to fill gaps Grandpa left
and help you breathe better.
So you devour papered prayer
-like swallowing paint,
and wait for pain to fade
like a fresh scrape in saltwater
after its first sting.
Is this the same robin from yesterday?
I don’t recognize his face
Ember fading like cigarette smoke
on my porch.
Stray cat.
The people I love
are coming back
for dinner.
Sitting in the Back of Synagogue (Because My Shoulders Are Too Scandalous to Pray With)
I want to scream
I am an aeroplane
not in the way a woman is
with her legs spread so,
balancing on teacup china,
like some Roman beam
or dissected butterfly
hanging on the wall.
No I am an aeroplane
the way my brother is
reckless rackling vibrato,
red molecules riding high
howling down
the temple aisle.
“Rambunctious Robert”
the congregation smiles
with their arms wide,
accepting that he is a man
born to take up space
with his wingspan
and cadence.
Yes- and I am an airplane!
I try to say
No. No you-
are a masthead.
Some cruelly carved mermaid
in calcified wood,
stuck swimming through amber,
like a mosquito from the dark ages
strung on an airport necklace.
I am draped
hips and holy curves
In the back of the synagogue
In the front of a ship
Can a sex symbol be sacrifice
for torah and sin?
Yet I still find myself here
in the pews I’ve known all my life
in tefillahs I sing when those I love die.
Kathryn Dawn is a senior at The University of Michigan studying Psychology and Creative Writing and Literature. She is also a painter and photographer. Kathryn’s work has also appeared in Furrow Magazine, and her artwork has been exhibited in Wall and Rah gallery. She lives in NYC with her three guinea pigs.
The Marbled Sigh 