LYING ON THE PATIENT TABLE—GEL ON THE WAND by Theodora Ziolkowski (Originally Published in Radar Poetry)
& the wand inside me—
I am looking at the screen
& the doctor is looking
for poison. Listen closely.
Some women go to hell
& come back without
turning the other cheek.
Every dream asks
for a reckoning.
View from inside me:
Nothing registers my touch
yet everything can touch me
is a memory.
Now Houston is on the lip
of a long green spring.
A bundle of bad cells
has the capacity
to grow & attack the body.
With a turn of a wand,
the ultrasound refutes
ghosts entirely.
He is not part of my world
& I am no longer in sight
of his perceptions—
I pull on my street clothes.
The door leads skyward.
Theodora Ziolkowski is the author of the novella On the Rocks, winner of a Next Generation Indie Book Award, and the short story chapbook Mother Tongues. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, The Writer’s Chronicle, and Short Fiction (England), among other publications. Previously, she has served as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast and Fiction Editor for Big Fiction. She teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
She can be reached through her website: