Poetry by Nora Cornell
Monthly, I sing to the Lord: does it have to be so painful? Reminders of my own youth
and potential, flushed violently
through my most intimate self. I never know
or hate myself more than when I’m standing
over the toilet, dripping fingers crooked inside myself, resigned to the week, upset at my own irrationality
but familiar with the warm slick of womanhood. Is this
what Eve condemned us to? I cannot blame her.
Inside, I am wailing, a chorus of ovaries and my ancestors
on a periodic exodus. It is fitting that Miriam
crossed the Red Sea soaking wet and nauseous.
Awake anyway in the middle of the night,
I stare into my own face, supernaturally pale in
the porcelain shrine: my own red tent, though
exile is self-imposed, a chromosomal remnant of shame.
Self-confrontation splits me from my center but years
practicing the dance of insertion and extraction has taught me more
than I ever really planned on knowing. I could
set my clocks to it, the cracked pomegranate of my body:
pianissimo, staccato, a crescendo, a key change,
the week of fortissimo, a pulsing pain, diminuendo, and a coda.
