It made no sense how something that felt so good thieved
me of choice, why my own flesh nursed new life only to
spontaneously discard it, later every word tasted like debris
in a clenched mouth and I didn’t answer your phone calls
and bled next to a stranger on the E train, my nose running
mid-September, armpits stinging with sweat, as if every
dwelling tissue purged itself new, and before I reached
Penn Station, I watched a child make finger gun at me
and when he pulled the trigger, the air bullet gnawed at
my womb, hush, little bird, whispered his mother and
the child fidgeted in his seat, watching my eyes, wrinkled
cherries, reach for the metal that scooped me clean, sticky
strings pulling from my lips, choking every breath in the car
with antiseptic cramps, I could hear fog sliding over Manhattan.
My Body Expelled Love
Clara Burghelea, MFA, is a Romanian-born poet. She is a poetry editor for different magazines and a review editor of Ezra. Her work has appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Her second poetry collection, Praise the Unburied, was published with Chaffinch Press in 2021. She is the recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award.