I bled through the entire month of April

By Kush Thompson

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land.
—T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land”

my doctor named this weeping.
a month of quartered lemon slices sucked from skin.
a month of ibuprofen in a deathless wound.
red raspberry leaves ground in green capsule,
slosh in jars of diluted vinegar.
so many tricks to braid the blood. clouds
of swaddled ply collecting in the trash bin.
a heaven of copper failures.
all day, I uncorked an october
from a place that wouldn’t stop

remembering. I wished for the dying in me
to hurry up and finish. but I keep all the rose
petals packed in plastic tubs on a shelf.
severed heads of  bloom bobbing
in yellowed brine. I keep the baby
just beneath the yielding bone.
her name, a muddy yolk of almost
fingernails screeching down my unmothering.
I fold a finger inside, half expecting to feel
a beginning of  hands seeping out.

Notes:

Audio poem performed by the author.

Source: Poetry (May 2024)