Biopsy in the Land of Blood
/Christen Noel Kauffman
a bath rug is painted with a body turning
on itself, this cave of wonders emptying the cells
I’ve tried to hold in. what is muscle memory when
everything merges into red and red on a bathroom
floor where I scrub the tile with a fine-toothed comb
until the color bleeds through. when Eve bled
the first time it turned into blooms, made a garden
big enough even god had been outdone.
I would like to take my uterus to a coffee shop,
let it sit in the open for the first time so I can see
its tired face, offer a biscotti to that worn and feeble
mouth. I’m supposed to be beautiful, I’ll say,
on the inside where my children un-scrolled
their legs into perfect Vs, put handprints on the walls.
I don’t know if anyone will notice it’s gone,
outside this biome where I’ll feel the space left
behind, where maybe only canines can sense
a different smell, a ram-shaped hole that once held
two hearts. in the land of blood, I walk to the clinic
to unveil myself, show them each specimen
they can touch and hold, endometrium thick
as the earth’s swollen skin. there it is, they’ll say.
let us save you from it.
Christen Noel Kauffman is a 2022 National Poetry Series finalist and author of Notes to a Mother God (2021), which was a winner of the Paper Nautilus Debut Chapbook Series. Her work can be found in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press), Tupelo Quarterly, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, and Smokelong Quarterly, among others.
