UNGOVERNABLE EMOTIONAL EXCESS or HYSTERIA

0 embryos out of 10 fertilized eggs
a rarity

Dead dream ghosted
by the endocrinologist
amplifying uselessness

Uterus projected on screen
mounted to the exam room wall

4 fibroids measure1-3 centimeters
small, comparably

I’m bleeding
not going to miss that
some dysphoria I think
throwing out a joke
here and there
about the comfort of having socks on during a transvaginal ultrasound
about the sheet not fully covering my body, tearing its paper edge
the tech reminds me to breath pointing out my

uterus
ovaries
cervix
fibroids

Looking up at the vent
cellar door and all that
thinking about poetry

the swerve introduces itself
it’s worth

Marriage
or magical practice

enmeshments with my mother

some fantasy
located in

unintelligible present
closing gaps
fearing feminine experimentation
embrace

simultaneous tethers replicating

after geriatric pregnancy
crone power buzzing

generative euphoria
visceral ontology
privilege of being able to live
written all over my face

a poetics

Trying to start again, pregnancy-the fool’s journey
out of the question
an impossibility

this disembodied strangeness
phantom birth
sudden poignant sadness
something wild
from the heart

just waiting around for the fibroids to grow

note in the margins “motility-Stein and sperm”

Zoe calls it my “ding a ling”
I change my pronouns
I think of you shelving books in Turner’s Falls

She tells me I am vicious and cruel

“and therefore, it’s in ruins”
“Someday the tree will grow large and bear red
fruit which will hang down in clusters”

Haphazard bloom
sprout sloppy
bikini cut
organs all
adhered together
conceptual uterus
scar tissue
a feeling like the mustang driving down
the snowy mountain
during the opening credits of Misery
with a special appearance by Lauren Bacall

I’m in an observing stage
how boring it can be
how sweet
and self-hating

“Oink oink”

Red woods
oldest living things
watching Vertigo
while my hound sleeps
a mysterious suicidal woman
in a fugue state
leans against a tree

“Please don’t ask me”
“Please don’t ask me”

all the white men and their verdicts

that is, she dies in the end anyway

Gender trouble is not averted
to roll around in
something stinky

“Settlers Lie and People Die”

Being fooled by my own inauthenticity
posing holding a red balloon
and what was the first act of rebellion?

The snow comes
is this perimenopause?

Time before body
crack, fissure
eight millimeters of thickness
stumbling across the picture of our one and only
embryo stuffed in my important documents folder

Thick after feeling
thickly settled

Someone exclaims trust
in my freckles
my baby’s knees
Isabella Zapata writes that she wants to be made invisible
a future stroll in the cemetery now that the heat has broken
contemplate the election
put Lukaza’s art in our window, “Palestine will be Free”
pinkly lit “Free Palestine”
as neighbors stare disapprovingly at our overgrown lawn and all the bees
a swim in the Mill River, not allowing water into my mouth
but having my mouth open

My surgeon moves his practice landing at the Fertility Clinics of New England in Reading, MA
where I did my IVF treatments

a mundane detail in my story
a little joke
about the hysterectomy
the closest I come to giving birth

while waiting for my medical chart to be transferred from Brigham, I long to close the chapter
on procedure and poetry remembering Dr. G’s hairy arms and how they soothed me when he
patted my leg before my last surgery, “see you in there”

“Flotsam and jetsam of the earth”
“Like gladioli in a lush garden”

Noisy scene
unsettling nerves
female shouts and screams

the group threatens to become
a court
of public
opinion
Arrow of time or Eros
or something close
and don’t forget my own occupation with my own
sexual and aggressive feelings stimulated by my
no baby coo to empty arms
unhinged honesty

Just sit on my face she says, you first

Britt Billmeyer-Finn is a poet and psychotherapist living in Greenfield, MA. Their book, the meshes, was published by Black Radish Books in 2015 and Slabs was published by Timeless Infinite Light in 2016. Britt’s work can be found in various publications such as Baest: a journal of queer forms & affects, La Vague Journal and Hot Pink Mag.