Birthday
An organ is lifted and placed on a metal tray.
Navigational problem solved. Room now
for hands, the adjunct magician
to retrieve the sleeping rabbit.
It never occurred to me
a stomach could be set aside
then tucked back in position. I assumed
such structures were fixed.
YouTube shows how fingers
work an incision
nothing like filleting a fish or sculpting
fast drying clay. Maybe seam-ripping denim
threads cut then
yanked apart. For all of this
I was gone
made to disappear.
A surgeon wrestled you free
like unsucking a shoe from mud.
She said your eyes were wide open. She said
they expected something more blue.
Her word catatonic
contained a volcano
that did not erupt.
What If
What if we felt at home in silence
after the wind moves on to wild another valley
littering hills the rush of dropped leaves
a mother’s arms hold
a memory of moving through water
toward her child in a black lake
on the phone decades later
her voice sits high
over a laugh witch-like and deep
a new sound
she urges into the vacant corners of a pause
the way television is used
to keep us safe
from the hammer of our thoughts
to tender the margins
like the cat they once had
who grew so old she was a feather
floating around the house
a bag of knots in your lap
she’d nudge your hand
generator loud
Sara Michas-Martin is the author of the poetry collection Gray Matter. Recent poems and essays have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Kenyon Review Online, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Stanford.
Header photo by Mylene2041, courtesy Pixabay.
