Abortion

Is it ridiculous 

to think this vulture 

might spare me 

once more, your 

childhood figurines 

and my powders 

this vulture, radiant 

drone that I like 

taking days to describe,  

the swift, blank  

removal how dutiful  

one becomes after 

everything, how  

briefly the spine 

embraces the symptom,

it is rare but infants 

can develop cataracts, 

you taught me that 

horror, this vulture 

poured luck into my body,

I read a text called 

Spleen about tyranny  

which said becoming 

animal begins 

before your mother 

and ends before your master,

this vulture, 

seeking and volatile, 

I had no future 

I had dirty wings

Heavenly Creatures

From here I can watch  

the neighbor’s television through the trees.

Romance is trapped in my past life. 

What I want has nothing to do with men. 

I walk to the store to remind myself

why I have chosen to escape this century. 

Tombstones, said the groundskeeper,

can feel it when you lay fresh flowers down. 

The Red Sun

People notice the serious 

look in my eye. I would never 

admit to being touched by illness.

I avoid the Latin word for touch. 

When I say it I feel completely female. 

There’s a bottle full of goat’s milk

I’d like to see tossed in the bathtub. 

Then I can begin to think  

about the shadow self, that drunk. 

I sleep in blood the way 

insects sleep in meadows; open, 

discoverable, expecting sex.  

Some women, in some places, 

disappear like handfuls of aspirin. 

You know their damp and fragrant bodies. 

In rural American, in typical clothes, 

I disappeared to become a symbol. 

Standing in the tallest wheat, 

the red sun made me a ghost.

Iva Moore is a poet from Waverly, Kentucky and the author of Women Collapse Into / Better, Brighter Artists (Oversound, 2023).