Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Sonohysterogram” by Annick MacAskill.

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Sonohysterogram

By Annick MacAskill

I told myself it would be like taking in the sea.

Indulgent consolation. And the word was made flesh

and dwelt among us. Re-reading the Hass essay,

I understood wound, lips split open

by the water-light’s cool tongue, a toothless mouth,

or long limbs surfacing in a black pool.

The wound of the night, wrote Walser—the moon,

our beautiful word-wound. Shadow curve

of silver-white beyond grey ceiling. Such slim

company, even in the afternoon. The way she escaped

that bruised skin, scraped down the sky, baby blue,

to become my resplendent twin, a phantom comfort,

in that room, dimmed, where real light, the kind you think

you can touch, was made of ocean spray. Later made rust

on the doll-sized panty liner, a mess of the saline

and iodine seeped back into the world, mud damp

over the pattern of violets, a different kind

of constellation on the screen. Days before, the final release

of my long-awaited blood, tapering grainy and black

in the toilet bowl, a perfect springtime soil. Now

my body gave nothing, the familiar brown-red

on the speculum and catheter and probe

not work I could lay claim to, the mocking doubled mess

of the iodine’s quick cleanse, faltering promise

of the left ovary, its too few follicles, and the final light

of air, though only one tube would take it, puff up proud

and promising, if yet alone. See? See?

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Copyright © Annick MacAskill

Previously published in Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024).

Annick MacAskill is the author of four full-length poetry collections, including Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), winner of the Governor General’s Award and a best Canadian poetry of 2022 pick by CBC Books, and Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024). MacAskill is a longtime member of Room Magazine’s Growing Room Collective and the founder and publisher of poetry micropress Opaat Press. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq.

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