The Clinic
Molly Sutton Kiefer
Strewn with fish scales, a puddle of iridescence,
curio cabinet. Mop a brow, waft the rim—aroma theory.
Smelling the core of me. I think I am diseased.
The terror of sharing, vapor that peels away.
Pink bath pearls loosened. Explain it: what I mean is,
sitting in a hospital gown, describing the swamp of me.
The doctor wants to see my tricks; the nurse wants
to usher my mother into the waiting room,
so they can call me whore without her knowing,
or maybe they want to keep her from battering me.
None of this is true. Instead, they scribble a letter,
to plant pills below the belt, tell me to chalk the infection
away. They missed the mark. It isn’t disease
I’ve brought; it’s the scent of ovulation.
How was I to know egg-heralding,
the scent of arrival, wink of possibility has the same bouquet
as infection, the disaster of a body opening shut.
Strewn with fish scales, a puddle of iridescence,
curio cabinet. Mop a brow, waft the rim—aroma theory.
Smelling the core of me. I think I am diseased.
The terror of sharing, vapor that peels away.
Pink bath pearls loosened. Explain it: what I mean is,
sitting in a hospital gown, describing the swamp of me.
The doctor wants to see my tricks; the nurse wants
to usher my mother into the waiting room,
so they can call me whore without her knowing,
or maybe they want to keep her from battering me.
None of this is true. Instead, they scribble a letter,
to plant pills below the belt, tell me to chalk the infection
away. They missed the mark. It isn’t disease
I’ve brought; it’s the scent of ovulation.
How was I to know egg-heralding,
the scent of arrival, wink of possibility has the same bouquet
as infection, the disaster of a body opening shut.
Working notes
This poem comes from a manuscript in circulation with publishers titled Pine on issues of the body and (in)fertility, and the ways in which language can alter an experience.
About the author
Molly Sutton Kiefer’s chapbook The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake won the 2010 Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award. Her work has appeared in Harpur Palate, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, Comstock Review, you are here, Gulf Stream, Cold Mountain Review, Wicked Alice, and Permafrost, among others. She received her MFA from the University of Minnesota, serves as poetry editor to Midway Journal, and runs Balancing the Tide: Motherhood and the Arts | An Interview Project. She currently lives in Red Wing with her husband and daughter and is expecting a second child in February. She is at work on a manuscript on (in)fertility. More can be found at mollysuttonkiefer.com
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.
For an updated list of works published in TRIVIA, please see this author's contributor page.