Nocturne with hysterectomy

Abstract

Nocturne with hysterectomy Kay Ulanday Barrett (bio) how you paused when the nurse said your name, notyour real name, but the one lodged onto your government ID.where you correct her, slurred and fevered, claim your pain level is a seven, and she tells you you’ll slide into the white cove fora CT scan. the drip in your veins allot enough energy not to wince.you hold your breath. they record your pelvis, tell you that everything will be hot, your toes spark star fire. don’t worry it’s temporaryis a saying you have heard & squint at. are you peeing on yourself?did the nurse use the wrong pronouns again? you laugh at this new privilege—how your white nurse will have to pick up after brown piss.how the rust you make is homegrown, how you can’t tell whois the butcher anymore. your own uterus after all asked to be bent, did you sling the slaughter? you imagine warmth, the fish roasted by yourmother’s hands, how seafood is the joke metaphor between our legs.after the scalpel, what will you smell like now? never mind this pandemic how your partner is informed she cannot go any further, she cannot sitwith you in re-wiring, your dizziness lacquered by less organs.Two weeks before: emergent. The report dictated, the field of your abdomen appeared a rorschach of cells, both my parents diedof cancer. You confess this inheritance of blooms. Ovaries can stay,the surgeon repeated. To not cry at the cephalopod shaped clots, shells of who you once were. To peel back sheets as they contortcolors you didn’t know you had in you. To not have the face of anyoneon the pamphlets. To know you are again, your own manual. [End Page 307] Kay Ulanday Barrett Named one of “9 Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Writers You Should Know” by Vogue, Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ napper. They are the winner of the 2022 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry by Foundation for Contemporary Arts, winner of a 2022 Tin House Next Book Residency, and a recipient of a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award from the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They can be reached at info@kaybarrett.net. Copyright © 2023 Kay Ulanday Barrett