Birth
The ubiquitous nature of bacteria,
we hope to demonstrate,

using sterile cotton swabs
and flowing blocks of agar—

thickly gray and gelatinous,
poured in rigid plastic plates—

ripe for inoculation.

We tear away each swab’s thin paper sleeve,
sliding the soft tips across the contents

of the room, and then
across the prepared medium—

the door handle and the lab desk,
reference books and microscope—

my fingertip,
and the fluid curve
of my climbing collarbone.

After three days, we observe
the following results:

lush, plentiful gardens
bursting

through the teeming plates—
swelling green and yellow spirals

alive
in the viscous soil,
flowering.

Groundswell
Watering green ribbons
illuminated—

my hands across
her gravid flesh

like flowering branches, ripe
against the glaring sun—

Doppler dowsing a fluid path
in search
of a whispering heartbeat.
Her eyes, unraveled—
gathering tears of trepidation
and joy.

Breathless

silence—

suddenly,

a ripple of sound—
slightly muffled at first,
then resonating,

soft,

like spring rain

spilling

over a swelling riverbed—

Fetal heart tones detected,
Lower left abdominal quadrant:
167 beats per minute.

Greensleeves
My breath spins fleeting white,
drawing near the icy blanket of blue flesh
found amongst the sleeting rain
and snow flurries—
uncommon for this time of year.
The quivering fist of her heart
unfurled in faint submission.
I wonder—
who will seek to find her pressed beneath
stark sheets and warming blankets?
My fingertip tracing the faded scar that paints
her frigid abdomen—the hallmark
of a child’s passage from her body
into its own—
who has loved her?

Proud flesh
White sleeves of winding gauze
against her skin—
she arrives in a taxi,
having pre-medicated with Fentanyl.
The doctors say she is lucky—
no central heat in her apartment,

boiling water on a hot plate to fill
her porcelain bath—

only her arms engulfed when the kitchen caught fire.
Silver shears through sullied swathe
unloose a wellspring
snared beneath a web of silvadine and kerlix—
tears of sanguine flesh quietly weeping,
spilling over sloughing eschar
and budding granulation tissue.