Poetry by Margaret King: On My Visit to an Oncologist

On My Visit to an Oncologist

“It looks like a large dermoid cyst.
They can be filled with fluid
Even teeth and hair,
Really, anything could be in there.”

Teeth! Hair!?
An ovarian voodoo doll!
I think I’ll keep her–
My dark twin, alter ego,
The laughing one
Cackling inside 
A baby Baba Yaga 
Spinning in her chicken-feet crib

Or–anything could be in there?!
A Bavarian Black Forest
An army of trolls
Packages of Haribo Gummy Bears
Helen of Troy’s ships
A Trojan horse
Unleashing poems upon rupture
Releasing books into my bloodstream
A library bumping against my other organs
Buoyed on blood tides

Isn’t that how we think 
Of the female reproductive organs?–
“Really, anything could be in there!”

“We should probably take it out.
After all, it shouldn’t be there.”

Take out my ovarian voodoo doll?
De-fang my left ovary?
Maybe it’s an infant vampire
Waiting to burst forth 
And bite off errant dicks
I think I’ll keep her.
I think I’ll keep
The secret poems, the library of books,
The fleet of ships,
The Trojan Horse that promises:
“Anything could be in there!”

Or maybe–
Sticks and stones to break my bones
A sealed death sentence
A beehive spitting bullets
A book of days
Dinosaur DNA
All that’s been buried and lost
The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Sifted into subconscious 
Watery graves
Atavistic genetic codes,
Cures for all our woes.