Allison Carter
Eggs
The cutting board is cool
against my shimmering side
both an operating table
and a gurney.
The crowd of buzzards cringe as
my belly is sliced deep,
after the cellulite and scales
are discarded
A professional wrench of the blade exposes white and pink
and drawing a healthy flow of hot red rain
Hacking
Pulling
Pieces of me slither from my stomach
to be examined and weighed.
“Look, you can see all the eggs!”
The surgeons cry excitedly
“It’s non-viable, nothing we can do”
My cousin declares, holding a fistful of fish guts
They remove my head next
no color on their screens
or the gasp of my gills
permit that i still occupy my shell.
My flesh is doled out in equal portion
but it is not enough.
I was not enough carrion in the beaks
of the vultures parading
before the Planned Parenthood
My body doesn’t have enough meat
for hungry children.
And the million eggs I was born with are never enough
for hungry lawmakers.
Grave 8
I lay in the crib fashioned by my husband.
Like those dozens of daughter of the future,
lying in the cribs built from IKEA boxes,
too laden with the weight of their own sons to lift their heads.
Dirt gags my empty throat and clay floods my sinuses as I wonder
if the sleeping babe in my arms might have sneezed like his father.
I see them now, my multitude of daughters,
pleading with their miniatures for an ounce of rest,
with their breasts for milk, with my lungs for air.
Please keep quiet,
I’ve finally gotten the baby to go down,
my agonal breath pleads
with the rain of my husband’s tears
I wish there had been crying after the pain,
after the screams, the bursting of blood
between my legs.
But no, there is just him, and me, and our son
with milk teeth hidden in the gums behind his blue lips.
Teeth so like the ones in matchboxes
or plastic treasure chests
but a tongue that will never taste milk.
Him, and us, and the cooling blood
that ornaments my thighs in never-ending rivulets.
We jingle like softest church bells as he arranges us.
My jewelry placed as a mosaic by the same fingers that tilled the soil of our garden
because they didn’t want me hunched for so long.
The obsidian blade my son would have used as
a man rests at his hip, a tintype of the one on Atta’s belt.
My daughters will find us in the future-
protected by the peat encasing my son’s fragile bones,
and the clay settling into my skin like a mask.
They’ll call him an angel baby, affectionately,
like they do with their own.
A young master’s student will sing him a lullaby
while she unearths him from his afternoon nap.
And my cervical vertebrae, lacking vocal chords,
will attempt a thank you.
But now it is him. And us. And me, Eva.
And we lay to sleep in the first and last crib my husband makes, padded with the soft mattress of a swan’s wing.
Prey
There is an agreement,
whether you pretend to know it or not.
That night belongs to the prey.
Animals that are caught
on trail cameras, cctv,
in the jaws of their predators.
Creatures that belong to both
the woods
and sidewalks.
I sit in the heated seat of my car
but tremble as if I’m the one walking the streets
out in the icy rain.
My eyes never leave hers.
The doe that stands sternly in the road,
she is solid as rock,
not even her nose twitches
As she stares down my metal machine
daring me to wrap myself
around a tree.
I hear the clicking of heels
in her hooves’ sure steps.
The turn of her head
to see if a figure follows her home.
And how she recedes to the trees,
as I do to the locks of my car door.
After sitting for ten minutes
and fearfully staring into the eyes of my skinny sister.
I wonder if she believes I am prey too.
Bio
Allison is a second year student at UCM attaining a degree in English Literature and a minor in Theatre. After graduation she plans to move on to graduate school to specialize in Early Modernist English. This is her first
publication of her work as a poet and author, but would like to thank her Dungeons and Dragons players for being her test audience for a score of silly poetic riddles.