Karla Lamb At nine weeks, slant shadows pull across the stained floor of the outpatient clinic. Dirty blinds shield the cracked window putting out the lit cigarette of horizon. I imagine how a soul enters the body. How we sweated off winter, on carpet or couch. How our tossed sheets became my Tuesday afternoon appointment. I-- imagine the drawbridge to my future. I imagine us, living in your parent’s Michigan basement. I imagine having enough wire—to hang myself. Outside, pro-life chants thunder like a psalm of drills—I also pray: an empty meditation upon the nothing. My modicum of truth. I sign the fine print, pay the requisite blood. A volunteer nurse walks me out. I puke in the parking lot. Tell work I can’t come in. Sunset slowdrags against dusk’s lining. Heavy rain recoils off my Honda’s dusty windshield. I drive the familiar stretch edged with the small shrines that memorialize car accidents. My little fugue—You’re no one, I’ll pine after Karla Lamb is a Chicana poet, with work appearing or forthcoming in A Women’s Thing Magazine, The Shallow Ends, Yes Poetry, Word Riot, Coal Hill Review, Fine Print Press, Dream Boy Book Club, & elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology 2019, & translated in Revista La Peste. She co-hosts Charla Cultural, a bilingual podcast centering underrepresented literary artists. Lamb lives in L.A. with her cat Fulano. More at karlalamb.com & @vinylowl.
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