My Absent Uterus Speaks
In A Minikin Voice About Knowledge, Time, and
Happiness, One Morning on the Second Anniversary of 9/11
What a beautiful day. I can hardly stand it.
Each time I pass through a sunbeam
in my living room or kitchen, the place where my womb used to be
inside of me grows more ecstatically empty.
Making me somehow, in particular, womblessly
happy.
You’re asking: what does that mean?
I don’t know what it means. Ask my womb. Or rather non-womb.
All I do is fiddle
with the volume. I’m only tweaking the audio. Because it jabbers
on its own through most of every day, a wonderful and idiotic burden.
I’m like a kangaroo
with inverted and displaced pouch, a human being.
A woe-man, woe-ma, woe-mama.
Whoa, mama. Can this be true? Actual happiness, even giddiness,
despite the world’s so-called, brand-new,
never-ending war?
My non-womb is wise
to the invariably scary language
of recent politicians. Also my non-womb knows that poems
should ignore politicians. But as something which doesn’t
in fact exist, my zero-place, like dark matter, exerts manifold force.
It cannot be disputed, it is fascistically correct
about everything, but I know very well that it, itself,
disputes everything that it, itself, says,
and therefore it's the opposite
of fascist.
And now my nothingness—this double nothingness, in fact—
would now like to say
something more: Time bends. Time spirals.
It breaks into pieces which are tossed
into the air. And this irrelevance happens so fast,
or rather, we’re tempted to use the word “fast,” but speed
may be only a ruse. Indeed even time, at precisely those times,
may be only a ruse.
And now you’re probably thinking: ruse for what?
How would I know? I’m happy.
Nichols © 2003
Draft posted for temporary viewing.