True Story

I once had dinner with a man

who gave himself a tension headache from trying to finish— 3 days

after she left his place, he stumbled to the ER, begging,

and all they could say was,

“you can’t try to come

so hard, you’re getting old."

Like kicking in a china cabinet

the moment the sun slips

past the east-facing windows,

the better to warm

the west, leaving the treasure

to fall into shadow.

Fucking stupid, fucking

lost, fucking

how? How

do we live

with wanting as badly

as we do?

The Vagina is a Birth Pothole

An interruption in an otherwise sound element

of the local, state, and federal infrastructures. It forms,

a victim,

of salt and winter.

Of economic depression.

Of willful malignancy.

Of the gods reaching down, forcing a twist of fingers

between legs,

tearing out a plug of skin

and replacing it

with a sci-fi apparatus

straight out of Ridley Scott’s wettest dream. The vagina

is a birth pothole,

folds warping inwards

against each other, rumpled

by February’s violent thrust,

monitored by the various

inspectors and construction crews

unionized for their “work”,

and guaranteed time off

for injury recovery.

The tertiary levels

of government wave

a wand to make

it go away. The Feds pay

someone to act

like the State was supposed

to fix it, argue freely

as the faceless

clock spins out.

Good to know

someone is liberated

around here.

Abigail Kirby Conklin is an educator and writer currently based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the author of the 2020 chapbook Triage (Duck Lake Books), the Substack "Recently," and a variety of other works that can be found in the Tule Review, Sugar House Review, Elevation Review, Lampeter Review, and Wild Roof Journal. She's online at abigailkirbyconklin.us and @akc_poet- ry_prints