by Katie Olson Afshar
My set up in the kitchen: four needles
over a dish towel, alcohol swabs,
a song picked out on the screen in my hand.
Seed packages decorate the countertop,
billboards to my ovaries: nasturtium,
morning glory, cosmos in watercolor pastel—
reproduction in effortless abandon.
The soundtrack: a Bulgarian folksong I know
from the documentary covering Antarctica—
an underwater scene, surface frozen over.
Jellyfish while the women sing.
Blue ranges of submerged glaciers and voices circle.
The camera lingers on air trapped under ice—
a small happening, but invigorating,
bubbles quiver towards June thaw.
I flick the chamber, plunge my tiny daggers.
Blooms open and close across my field of navel,
a glittering in the current underneath skin.
Folksingers threw song across mountains
before there were roads, spoke to a village one peak over.
Their throats carried two notes at once.
This track I used to play for men
sprawled over my bed in the afternoon.
Now I play it for my body.
Blood weeps the punctures between yesterday’s bruises.
If voices could braid the nimbus
of next spring’s rain.
Katie Olson Afsharis a writer and a pediatrician with a deep love for the human body, but conflicted feelings about modern medicine. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Catamaran and Hunger Mountain, among other journals. She lives in the California Bay Area with her husband and daughter.