The Dutch word for cyst is cyste with a hard c-sound. Not sister, kissed her. In Dutch
English, a cyst is kissed. Every month I give birth to a little liquid
sac. I can feel it flop in the ambiguity of my abdomen when I lay on my
side. How does it move when it’s penned-in? Tender golf ball, taut lychee,
baby bladder crying louder on the left side. Little headache getting riper,
about to hatch. I want to write a book that only involves the soft parts, but
some cysts grow teeth; all my soft parts are biting: ovum dentata, ovum
viper.
Instead I have gentrified in my own skin.
I’m living here skinly, little paper dog
clouding my left-hand view. It used to be you
had a constant practice and away. Little ones
divide the moonside alight; I’m into it now,
all hopped up on ink—cool in the possibility
of shadow. Later this moment will be daytime
and later still, print. In the meantime I do my
best to leave nothing in the center this poem
is a meditation.
Laura Wetherington is a U.S. poet based in the Netherlands. She has two books: Parallel Resting Places (Parlor Press), chosen by Peter Gizzi for the 2020 New Measure Prize, and A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books), selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. Laura works as the poetry editor for Baobab Press and teaches creative writing both at Amsterdam University College and through the International Writers’ Collective.