A short narrative of breasts and wombs in service of Plot entitled by Claudia Rankine

A short narrative of breasts and wombs in service of Plot entitled

Liv lying on the floor looking at

The Dirty Thought

[The womb similar to fruit that goes uneaten will grow gray fur, the

breasts a dying rose, darkening nipples, prickling sickness as it moves

toward mold, a spongy moss as metaphor for illness.]

Liv, answer me this: Is the female anatomically in need of a child as a

life preserver, a hand, a hand up? And now, and now do you want

harder the family you fear in fear of all those answers?

Could you put fear there as having to do with the price of milk, as having 

to do with prudence? To your health. Cheers. Or against the aging

body unused, which way does punishment go?

“Let us not negotiate out of fear . . . ” butbutbut . . . Then the wind

touched the opened subject until Liv finding herself in light winds,

squalls, was without a place to put her ladder.

From the treetop something fell, a bundle, a newspaper, a bug, a bag,

still nobody’s baby. The sound was desperation dropped down, a

falling into place, and not way away—

Statistics show: One in what? One in every what? A child in every pot

will help the body grow? No matter, all the minutes will still slip into

the first then the ashes will shiver.

Liv, is the graffitied mind sprained? Who sprayed an answer there?

Which cancer? What dirtied up intention? No matter. Anyway, which

way does your ladder go?

Toward? Or away in keeping with that ant crawling on your ankle? Oh

mindless hand, rub hard. Not quite in pain because pain is shorthand

for what? One in every what? Cradle all.

Or kiss it up without facing yourself. Knowing the issue, Liv slouches,

her chin resting on her folded hands. She thinks: blunt impact, injury.

She tosses a but against the wall,

she tosses: boom. boom.