if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon
Lucille Clifton,
“poem in praise of menstruation”
We were the moon’s sworn sisters:
rhythmic, sticky, glistening.
That was an article of faith.
But now I’d swear, if any goddess
took me in charge back then,
she was not the moon: she was
a squat, dripping creature
with foul breath dragging her bulk
across the living room, clutching
a nightstick to jab in my back. Call her
goddess of stained jeans soaking
in the bathroom, of super-absorbent
overnight pads, name her shambling
mud-nymph of clots, of tampons
like dead mice, mother of headaches
that drowned out the newscast,
of days when I slunk from desk
to toilet, days when I had to lie down,
who left me to leak in the blankets,
who trilled her alarm in my bones.
