Augmentation

Half-shadowed, sidelong

in the mirror, I am the flat earth

no one believes in any more,

a mythic landscape

before men knew better,

before maps were redrawn.

I touch the milkless place

where my breasts bloomed

and I am tilled soil,

tamped ground: nothing

grows in me, nothing

clings to my skin.

Outside, acres of night,

the sound of a car starting,

the stars like a high road

to nowhere, fiery planets

I can’t see, ribbons

of moonlight and dust.

How I want to walk them,

step out of my body,

move like an astronaut

across the surface of my life—

leaden, miraculous, chest

cratered with light.

letter to my breasts

I am sorry

for the white expensive room

that smelled of peppermint

where I let a man

indifferently span you, observe

your sparseness of tissue.

His smooth fingers

had crescent nails and large cuticles.

They left no mark,

did more violence

than the man who bit you

so hard he left a nipple scarred,

than those who cupped you

without permission

in nightclubs and taxi queues,

those who insulted you,

denied you were

even there.

He held the tape measure politely.

His hands made me believe the body

could be measured, made me betray you;

you who fed my son and made me

shiver, you who let me run

for miles in winter,

who let me climb

through a squeeze of gritstone

and emerge at the top

a breathless child

with the county below me,

the cold sky above.

underground

After the birth, my body was ferrous with so much blood.

I tasted wrought iron, remembered the railings in Eastwood Park

how a tree grew through and bent them, left them ruined,

perfect. First, I thought I was the metal, warped with life.

Then I held my child each night and I was the tree, sap-filled,

skin puckered by weather, sprouting wide leaves, letting

my roots taste silence underground. When my boy stopped feeding

and I fell, a part of me stayed bedded in the grass.

i’ve heard the surgeon sits you up

unconscious

to assess his handiwork, the symmetry

and fullness of your entered skin.

Your eyes fix on nothing, your hair

falls softly, beautifully. You are

held up by an assistant’s hands,

heavy and perfected, your face

emptied, as if it is enough to be upright,

half-naked. As if their work here is done.

flowers

In Canada, I go to hurt at the hands

of a stranger, just to the side of my heart.

I cover my breasts with kitchen towel and tape,

two white squares, two misted windows.

Prone in the leather chair, I let him

lean in gently, touch me with a needle

and pain blooms precise and endless

through my sternum, down

to where my breath is held.

All the while, his mouth keeps working:

his girlfriend’s a psycho, he’s going to break

somebody’s hands, he was brought up

to respect women’s bodies. When this is

over, he will tell me how to heal

and I will flower in black and gray, my breasts

forever holding a small bouquet,

saying here we are, thank you for inviting us,

saying we’re so glad we came.

flight

I am running

down the spine

of Sheffield,

pushing my boy

in his huge buggy.

He peers out

as if he explains me,

and will protect us

from the hecklers

who spat at my heels

when I jogged

street after street

as a teenager:

you’ve got no tits

you’ve got no tits

you’ve got no tits

you’ve got no tits.

These mud-and-

birches days, I have

outrun them,

joined with the frame

and wheels,

flesh of my flesh.

I am not the arrow

but the curve

of the bow,

look at us,

look at us now,

look how fast we go.