fertility

• The colour of blood which defines us
• “Tell them fresh, for the eggs” she says. “Not like last time. And a chicken, not a hen”
• The daffodils are now fading and the tulips are opening their cups, spilling out colour. The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as of they have been cut and are beginning to heal there.
• Many of the wives have such gardens, its something for them to order and maintain are care for
• The plump shapes of bulbs held in the hands, fullness, the dry rustle of seeds
• Her left foot on the footstool, because of her arthiritus. Or knitting scarves, for the angels on the front lines
• worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink, like lips
• her belly, under her loose garment, swells triumphantly
• no longer winecups but chalices; thrusting themselves up, to what end? … When they are old they turn themselves inside out, then explode slowly, the petals thrown out like shards
• “determines me so completely” (her body)
• Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others which have become my own.
• I am a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear.
• Even the Commander is subject to its [her bodies] whims
• Even at her age she feels the urge to wreathe herself in flowers…you can’t use them anymore, you’re withered. They’re the genital organs of plants.
• no toeholds for love. we are two-legged wombs, thats all; sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices
• some blitzkrieg, some kamikaze, committed on the swelling geneatalia of the flowers
• Goddesses are possible now
• To him I’m not just a boat without cargo, a chalice with no wine in it, an oven- to be crude- minus the bun. To him I am not merely empty