On Black Letter Day

Blood pumps red through aorta madly whirls

through arteries capillaries veins

two thousand gallons

through sixty thousand miles every day

and you you are blind

to this crimson primacy and how clots

drip from a vulva

at the monthly moon

What do you know

of being on the rag misery of the curse

—the red rubies of pain

—the deep laceration of ache

when a menstrual period arrives or not

and what it all means

over the course of a woman’s life

the again again again of it

every four weeks for forty years

I gave birth less than I conceived

but my great grandmother

ballooning in pregnancy year after year

delivered twelve And now now

under a Strawberry Moon you gut us

body autonomy strike down fifty years

the trigger on trigger ban pulled

so that a raped ten year-old who misses by two days

Ohio’s six week abortion cut-off must flee

prosecution across state lines for health care

you you lay law only against a female body

but not the man’s no no never the man

enjoying freedom to inject his seed

with near impunity

O——-the ebullient full-throated rage of it

bloody tongues and chewed lips thick with disbelief

What right do you you the not-gods

the not-supremes to take us back to back-alley

Just look look how these night stars

cannot be extinguished nor the solstice sun

banished from burning and you you

cannot hold this tenacious tide nor silence

its incessant roar.

—After Dobbs V. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 6/24/2022

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by Shawna L. Swetech