Category: Bad Medicine—September 2026

Part I

I keep saying my body ate my baby
my body ate
my baby my body
ate my baby ate my body—

my baby ain’t a body
can’t say
_______can’t say baby
can’t say my baby—
_______________wasn’t no living thing
_______________just a will kill you cluster
_______________a lethal / abstract / mass
oh Lord
_______I’m not trying to wallow
not trying to hurt no feelings
______________________say nothing aimed at nothing
Lord don’t you know
_______I’m just trying
to understand my monster
______________________________oh
it is monstrous
_______I took poison
said no to the dividing cells
______________________oh
don’t you know
_______they kill your baby (not a baby)
like it’s cancer
______________if it’s in your tubes
or they cut it out
and give you a report
______________________pediatric pathology
_____________________it says
_____________________________pediatric
_____________________like a baby but
it’s not a baby and will kill you and
don’t you know
_______it is monstrous / I said look at me
I am a monster
______________and
Doctor says
_______take a seat.
______________This is a body
_____________________divided from you—
For what? For forgiveness? For sins?
_______What sin in all this?
_______What sin? What body?

Part II

God knows—he really does
I have stolen husbands
I have failed my students
I have had a drink when I should
have gone instead to sleep
I have not called my grandmother
when she has left message
after message after message
to say she misses me please call
and I can feel her getting old and
_____________________this is my blood which is shed for you
_____________________for the forgiveness of sins
this is all of our blood / shed
all of our sins / plead for and
all of the quiet poems / at the center
of my faith
______________my many meditations
______________said again and again

and I promised daddy I would not be
a sinner would be a good
______________and grateful girl

but Lord I have fractured them promises
have sinned and shed blood for it
and look now
______________at that would be body
_______of my blood
all ate up to save my life—
Am I a selfish girl?
______________What looks like living?
Say
_______Eat the body /
drink the blood / for forgiveness—
_____________________my God
_____________________my God
your premise
has forsaken me /
______________had to
______________eat my own baby
______________drink my own blood
to live

I shouldn’t know the underside 
of my almost adult daughter’s breasts
but someone had to wash them
and she chose me.

Her own arms were too tangled
in IV lines and bandages
to help
but she chatted while I 
prepared the antiseptic soap
placed towels on the shower chair
tested the temperature of the water
which just wouldn’t stay warm enough.

And then I am on my knees
in this unfamiliar hospital bathroom
where so many thousands of others
have washed
and pissed
and shit
and undoubtedly prayed
to the wild gods, the mad gods, the forgotten gods—
any gods who might 
take them out of
this fluorescent box.

The gods don’t answer.
They rarely do.
I carefully scrub the arches of her feet
the hollows between her ribs
the soft caves of her arm pits
all the places that should belong
to just her and those 
she invites to visit.
I am as gentle as I can be
But her face creases with pain.

I’m sorry, I want to say.
Are you all right,
I want to ask.
But I am silent. Her thoughts, 
at least, are hers alone.