UTERUS
Angels, demons, and the battle for the womb
Prologue (to my reader)
This story, my dear, I did not write
To mold your heart to the wings of Nature
I am by no means a Mary Oliver.
Nor did I express it
To consume you in a romantic volcano
Never was I a Victor Hugo.
Nor did I pick a pen
To redefine human emotion
Such as the Sweet Bard, alias Bacon.
You see, being me, I write not to break hearts
But to mend them
Through joy, sadness, and Joy:
The equation of my simple soul.
Here goes…
Genesis
The Devil’s work is sublime
I can imagine the fallen Lucifer
Pacing in the soot of Hell.
I can imagine Him thinking.
Scheming, planning.
Burnt, blackened, angry, and arrogant.
‘I will seek vengeance.’’ He thinks.
‘’I will eradicate what is closest to the Mother and Father God, made in their image.’’
I can see the Fallen concocting
in his mighty intelligence,
phenomenal revenge:
how to destroy God’s crowning creation.
Where to attack?
Where to crack the marble egg of perfection?
For Woman and Man, finely tuned by evolution, had by then reached utter perfection.
‘Poison!’’ He exclaimed.
‘A poison that invisibly corrupts.
A poison that systematically works.
A poison that works silently, efficiently, and with deadly accuracy.
A poison that preserves the vessel while contaminating its treasure.
Poison so subtle that it reaches into the inner, most sensitive organ and yet so violent that it destroys the unity of human love and the vigor of the offspring.
A poison that will be transmitted over the generations.
A poison that so invisibly weakens as it is being transmitted that the spreaders will be unaware of its impact.
A poison that shakes up the multitude by enabling violence such that the victims eventually kill themselves out of slow-burning pain.’’
I can see the Devil planning further.
‘Make the poison pleasant. Palatable, even.
Make it a precious fantasy, somewhat forbidden, so that Humans may dream of it in secret.
Easy and reprehensible in the alcove of their dreams
Like the forbidden fruit
A variety, of sorts, but even more so.’’
And then, the Devil had a brilliant idea.
‘’In order to fully destroy the unity of Woman and Man, let us organize the distribution of the poison so that the victims are blamed by the community while the spreaders go on to live in impunity.’’
And then, then the Fallen had His stroke of genius.
‘’Let humans shape God into the resemblance of Man and let them think that Woman is allied to me so that the holder of the womb will feel forever guilty.’’
And then, there was rape.
Childhood
Shadow in the sun
It is summer.
It is summer and I am a toddler.
It is summer, I am a toddler and I have a busy mother.
It is summer, I am a toddler, I have a busy mother who’s afraid of the fast-running cars on the road.
It is summer, I am a toddler, I have a busy mother who’s afraid of the fast-running cars on the road and I am playing in my sandpit.
It is summer, I am a toddler, I have a busy mother who’s afraid of the fast-running cars on the road, I am playing in my sandpit in my diapers.
Stop.
Why does that matter?
Because my busy mother had to answer a phone call and start a washing, she has attached my diaper to a line linked to the clothesline. I have movement, but it is restricted. Zwing, zwong, I run in the grass along the line, happy and unhappy. Happy for the birds and the bees and the butterflies of August and of the wondrous feeling of living grasses under my tiny feet. Unhappy of my limitation to embracing it all, attached as I am to a line that subjects me to linear indignity.
For the world is one and great and though I did not want to come again, here I am, a sensuous animal, a bundle of perceptions, a concentration of Life, talented and gifted beyond anything this family has ever seen, and though this line is fixed to my diaper, I am not.
I take off the diaper and run free, roaming the space like a toddling Salome, learning her steps directly from the Goddess. The veils have fallen and I am wearing sunlight as my garment. Free!
Suddenly, a cloud blocks the sun.
It’s not a cloud.
Womb
In the beginning, there was the belly
Smooth, pure, and perfect
Then came the shadows
One and one and two and one
One more
And again
Each one of them leaves its mark
Crack or creak
In the matricial building
In the organicity of the prepubescent village
A canyon tore the ground
Then was covered
In silence
Afterward, there was the belly
Smooth, pure, and perfect
Although crucified by invisible nails
Marked forever
Attack
His name is Peter, he is 17
Dwelling in a prison of labor unseen
In which his father put him
As he was 3.
A knife for himself
A dick for his sisters
A knife for himself
A dick for his neighbor
As was done to him.
My name is Anne-Christine and I am 3
A naked spirit running free
Under a hidden eye
Perverted, under the tree.
A knife for myself
As there is no other
A knife for myself
Alone in the torpor
Of what he does to me.
If I jump across the spiral of time
If I leap across the gap
If I reach out to the wounded
You, Peter. You and me
Can I set all of us free
Under the tree of 3?
Attack
The farmer was the owner
The parents were the teachers
The farmer on the tractor
The farmer was a friend.
The teachers in the trailer
The teachers trust the owner
The farmer on the tractor
The farmer is a friend.
The girl on the tractor
The girl is a toddler
The farmer on the tractor
The farmer is a friend.
The mouth of the farmer
His mouth on the toddler’s
The farmer on the tractor
The farmer is a friend?
The disgust on the tractor
The disgust is forever
The farmer on the tractor
The farmer was a friend.
Teenager
Good girl, bad girl
Good girl wear bras
Bad girls wear strings
But good old Anne
Is naked.
Good girls wear diamonds
Bad girls wear gold
But good old Anne
Is chained.
Good girls wear lace
Bad girls wear leather
But good old Anne
Doesn’t fit.
Adulthood
Undead Porn
What’s sex to the undead?
A flicker, a memory vague
An undefined ravaging hunger that calls for a feed.
Meaty encounters at the local pub.
What’s fulfillment to the mutilated?
A hope, a dream of green prairies in the desert
A tear in a ravaged oasis, a reach for mercy.
The promise of an unlooted land.
What’s orgasm to the abused?
A task, a job to perform
An instruction manual turned into habit.
A mechanism prone to porn.
The undead can’t dance.
Senseless
Sex is pleasant
Sex is unpleasant
Sex is duty
Pleasure is dutiful
So, what?
The body is a bounty
The body is aplenty
Orgasm is lousy
When pleasure is duty
So, what?
The womb is clenching
In fallopian trembling
Invisible markings
Maternity divorcing
So, what?
Hysterectomy
If I spread my arms
If I arch my fingers
If I stand on one foot
If I twist one leg around the other
If I curve my back
I still cannot achieve
the shape of what I lost.
No.
I have to bend my head and look down.
Then the shape is perfect
Then the pride is gone
Lose your head to enact the womb.
Is this a curse?
Cold in COVID
What time is it?
It’s the time-out of arguments
In the snowy night of pandemic
The snowy night of Dresden
Where the streets, astonished by their own whiteness, echo the echo of Christmas lights
Still lighted
A rebellion in the face of the inescapable silence of quarantines
And cold.
What time is it?
I write blindly in the light of candleholders filled with the smell of jazz
Powerful, intoxicating
The night is blue of jazz and snow
Boredom knocks me out and lifts me up
Like an incense stick
The snow has clothed the trees, their branches
with fine silk stockings.
What time is it?
Under my heavy, slumped pencil, the waves undulate
One would rather oneself wick than tallow
But what would it change
To the mediocrity of the world
The fieriest words
Trigger only misery
And the most peaceful, anger
My husband is coming,
Calls me to him.
It is half-past ten.
