Cetacea
Molly Kiefer Sutton
The order of marine mammals that include
dolphins,
porpoises,
and whales.
I
believe I epitomize
lumber
at my acupuncture
appointment today. My sciatic nerve
is furious, bleating out small
shards of pain.
The doctor said, You must be one of those women who get as
big as a garage.”
It’s an interesting image: baby-as-car,
humming
until winter-warm.
But I prefer W H A L E,
as it forgives my all-over enormity, allows me
to feel a bit
peaceful, imagining myself as
enclosed in water too.
That
word: obese. A hook to hang me on.
(Obeisance) (Obedient) (Obliging)
The doctor does what
he does,
moving his work-chapped
hands along my bare back,
stopping to punch me with his little
contraption.
It isn’t enough that
he left me bee stung, so
many needles,
but I’d pressed my stomach and
breasts into any space left for my lungs
and here goes the
table with its lift and fall lift and fall.
Molly Sutton Kiefer is
the author of the hybrid essay Nestuary (Ricochet Editions, 2014) and the
poetry chapbooks The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake (Astounding Beauty
Ruffian Press, 2010) and City of Bears (dancing girl press, 2013). Her work has
appeared in The Collagist, Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, WomenArts
Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, Southampton Review, and Permafrost, among
others. She is a founding editor of Tinderbox Poetry Journal, is a member
of the Caldera Poetry Collective, reviews for PANK and The Rumpus, and runs
Balancing the Tide: Motherhood and the Arts | An Interview Project.
More can be found at mollysuttonkiefer.com
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