Another woman steals a picture
of our doctor from his office,
him cupping new babies.
She centers him on her refrigerator
with a Buddha magnet,
prays to him daily
over the ritual of opening,
of the taking of milk and cream.
In the fall she has a daughter
fat as a butterball turkey
while my belly remains empty,
the only objects filling
my kitchen, held tight,
an “I visited Wall Drug” postcard
and the face of a brother
like a rotting jack o’lantern
A year later, I bump into her
in a clinic parking lot.
She offers up an ultrasound
of her eye, points out the spot
they zapped her clear of a clot.
She cries out
of her one good eye,
asks me to pray she will see,
that her vision no longer floats.
I pull her to me,
take her in,
take her x-ray eye home,
throw her voodoo in the trash.

—

Cathryn Cofell, Appleton, is the author of two full length collections, Sister Satellite (Cowfeather Press, 2013) and Stick Figure With Skirt (forthcoming from Main Street Rag), and six chapbooks including Split Personality with Karla Huston (sunnyoutside, 2012). You can also hear her perform her poems on Lip, with the music of Obvious Dog. Her work has been published in over 300 journals and anthologies and is the recipient of over 50 awards, including the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award (2019), the Mill Prize for Poetry (2019), the Lorine Niedecker Poetry Award (2014) and multiple Pushcart nominations.