Menopause

We love a stain
The way walls are beloved
    of vandals.
But when blood stops,
The cunt no longer has
    the vicious geography of a wound,
the vagina full of church
    and waiting.
Loss is bright, insistent,
The uterus' wise arithmetic,
the vacant, late blue
    of an orchid.

- Natalie Kenvin


copyright © 2000 Natalie Kenvin