With a red pen,
the disease draws
inside my abdomen
a chain of volcanoes
erupting on cue
and rivers of lava
sliding across organs,
then hardening into rock,
traces on my ovaries
silhouettes of faces
that will never be,
scrawls on my uterus
infinity symbols.
The disease takes
years to gestate.
The disease claims
dominion over me,
makes me an accomplice.
Elizabeth Onusko’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Best New Poets 2015, Slice Magazine, The Journal, Linebreak, Southern Humanities Review, and The Adroit Journal, among others. They have also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and featured on Verse Daily. She is the author of Portrait of the Future with Trapdoor, which won the Bryant-Lisembee Book Prize and will be published by Red Paint Hill in 2016. Visit her at elizabethonusko.com.
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