DIAGNOSTIC LAPAROSCOPY

Poetry
Written By Santa Fe Writers Project

By Kaleigh O’Keefe

I. What will the surgeon find inside me?

  • blood and muscle

  • inflammation

  • scar tissue (to be expected)

  • scar tissue (that wasn’t expected)

  • a box of Kleenex

  • maybe that tampon I still don’t know if I lost on the dance floor or if it got sucked into the black hole behind my cervix seven years ago when I got too drunk at that lesbian music festival

  • the black hole behind my cervix

  • two cups of black tea

  • ten thousand swallowed tongues

  • a handwritten prescription for hysteria, carved into my endometrium

  • the map and boots my uterus used to wander the hills of my body

  • a steam-powered mechanical iron mouth that says I’m sorry and only that, over and over again

  • the peas I shoved up my nose in kindergarten

  • pain, 11

  • an old stone wall creeping through my guts

  • a bomb

  • endometriosis?

II. What the surgeon thinks he will find inside me:

  • endometriosis

III. What the surgeon finds inside me:

  • endometriosis

Kaleigh O’Keefe (they/them) is a gender outlaw and proud union member living in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Their poetry has appeared in Breaking the Chains: a Socialist Perspective on Women’s Liberation, Slamfind, won the PRIDE Poetry Prize in Passengers Journal, and is featured on indie music legend Ceschi’s album Sans Soleil. Kaleigh is a contributor and editor for Liberation News, is a co-founder of Game Over Books, and hosts the First Fridays Youth Open Mic in Jamaica Plain. You can find them at www.kaleighokeefe.com, and on Instagram: @kaleigh.okeefe.poetry @FirstFridaysJP @GameOverBooks.

Santa Fe Writers Project
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