Lynne Ellis

Ovary Elegy

I first met them in a yellow pamphlet
            fresh from the doctor’s office

sanitized       line drawn
            at odds with my own active body

No sense of motherhood grew in adolescence
            only promises for future flush & slough

I never saw much use
            for the hundred-thousand brood

Now     learning of my mis-luck gene pick
            I have to send them off

If I were to thank them for their work
                        I might say

I have had cause to mourn
            the fist control of estrogen    yet

it is this what makes me soft
            this what curves into my hips
                                                    & cheeks
what lends the wet into my sex
                                       what folds itself
                   into my bones
& pushes up in domes
                             over my lungs

                        Strange aquatic beasts
                             what let my shape fall full
                   & thick
& rich

BRCA1 

breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein

A corvid defending its perch.

        Feathers everywhere. Beak blood.
Sharp in the ear: a promised death

I try to evade with gifts
        of tinsel, bread and coins.

        Two pneumatized bones
given in return. Currency.

Lattice chambers full of air
        are straws for the marrow suck.

        My low-cut t-shirt shows breasts
so tough to find a bra for but

today I let them peek:
        twin stowaways in muscle,

        a place to rest, pressed against a chair,
flesh spread vast and kissed.

Imagine me
        without them: sternum-light,

        all my blouse buttons flat.

I’ll take the kisses. The heat
        of lip and nipple pinch,

        the thrill of bite.

Lynne Ellis (she/they) writes in pen. Her words appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, the Missouri Review, Sugar House Review, The Shore, Moving Parts Press, and elsewhere. They were awarded the 2021 Perkoff Prize in Poetry and the 2018 Red Wheelbarrow poetry prize. Her chapbook, In these failing times I can forget, confronts the human cost of rapid growth in a prosperous American city. Ellis is co-editor at Papeachu Press, supporting the voices of women and nonbinary creators.