If you were to peel open one by one the balled fingers of
my fist (like removing a dangerous object from the clench
of an infant) a trickle of red down the wrist too/ and if the
palms of some poets hide knives/ torn hearts/ others still
the juiciest of figs/ if you could unlock my tight curled fist
you would find a near-perfect specimen of hysterical womb syndrome.*
Bald-animal loosed from its connections to pelvic bone/
nerves/ cervix/ blood branches and coiled itself in a knot,
travelling up the thorax, ejecting via the mouth as in a
disgorged pip or bean. Caught in the palms it's as hard
as stone/ flexible as rubber. And sticky inside my fingers like
ruptured figs or segments of heart.
My errant uterus shrinking after birth like oven-roasted
capsicum (another artist's representation of the organ,
which included a densely-packed wad of seed, flush right.)
While years ago in Borneo witchdoctors strapped foetus
-size stones to their waists and scrunched up their faces
mimicking birth pain
Executed sympathy dances for first-time mothers. And
further back in time Caesarean sections were performed
without anaesthetic and the suture poulticed with a
decoction of agrimony / betony / mallow / flowers of pomegranate /
dried roses / sedge and sweet-smelling bulrushes / steeped in sour
black wine
Tracing developmental rock-nubs of the foetal spine/ red
leaf veins of the circulatory system, which ravels and
spreads like time-lapse photography or plashing rain a priori
to lightning. And the woman shoeless, thrusting her
uterine-stone into clouds. Waiting for the strike
Waiting for the flash of quickening, the coagulation of the
light of life that attaches itself - clinging - to the walls of
her thunder-egg womb. Concealed in her outstretched fist
like a felt-soft jewellery pouch, jiggling ruby cells/ diamond
bone. Remembering that the shaman's organs became
quartz in the dark extremity of his dreaming
The container of her uterus as petri dish incubating the
life-producing agent - semen - as it congealed into the
child. States the Qur'an for example, human life is created
out of a small quantity of sperm that has been poured out. Which
can be read as half the world's oldest (Aristotle,
Upanishads) and most arrogant error.
Overlooking our ovaries honeycombed with eggs. Drawing
our wombs with horns. Telling us it was a small animal that
could be called back to its rightful place by balancing on
our navels a nutshell containing tincture of horehound / honey
/ Muscat / the cat's fat / the warmth of a lit candle
*a nineteenth century female complaint occasionally cured by creative
therapies such as the application of 'intravaginal insufflations
of tobacco smoke' and clitoridectomy. the uterus was thought to be a little
wombat-like animal that had the liberty of wandering throughout the
female body and causing neuralgic disturbances…
