Katy Lederer

Parturition

 

Birth as decreased
umbilical function.
Layer upon layer.

Available figuration
for unavailable creation.
Birth as a fantasy of loss.

Ovarian in mantle
like a fighter, hands
come out fanning.

We reach out with our
fingers: nothing there.
We try to splay

our wings, but we
can feel it is impossible.
There is this relevance,

irrelevance. Emotional
to speak in sterile language,
unemotional.

We dreamed
our hands could splay,
our wings could spread.

As trophoblast,
we could not latch.
This must be sadness.

 

Bloody Show

Here, a shroud or shred.
Something bony. A hand,

here, or a wing, splayed
out. Subsequently, our

condition was discovered
to be a fetus. Our lives

were then discovered to be
fetuses. Everything was

a fetus, but then nothing
was a fetus, and our eyes

broke into guarded life.

 

Meat Eaters

A you and I were in it, and we ate.
We put some others in it, and they ate.
We couldn’t seem to make out shapes.

Instead we intuited our movements,
called our homestead camp, unfurled
our filthy sleeping bags and zipped them

to our napes. Teeth rooted, crimson tongues
unfurled, we exercised our self-restraint
by preying on the dis-interred, the already-

extinct. We wanted to wake up, but slept.
In dreams, we gnashed our tongues between
our teeth, mouthed sounds to imitate,

but found we could not speak. Our eyes
would close. Our hands would weep. Since
chaos is what causes chance, we buffeted

our tents, repaired our fences, had our
wounds re-lanced. All through the camps:
carnality. The sun bled red from East to West.

We always knew what we were eating.