Strangest of all was the knife,
how gingerly she pushed it through
the soft raw crust of the pie
freshly-formed on the oven’s surface,
preheat already rising in waves,
her glance warning me not to touch—
the same woman who decided,
a week before my seventh birthday,
to have me circumcised
during one of many surgeries
no masked face bothered to explain,
just a few breaths then waking
to a rough crescent of stitches in
a room with soap-white walls,
then, later, her cold hands
methodically rubbing Vaseline
into such swollen, inexplicable hurt,
soliciting the rarest of smiles.
MICHAEL MEYERHOFER‘s fifth poetry book, Ragged Eden, was published by Glass Lyre Press. He has been the recipient of the James Wright Poetry Award, the Liam Rector First Book Award, the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize, and other honors. His work has appeared in many journals including Hayden’s Ferry, Rattle, Brevity, Tupelo Quarterly, and Ploughshares. He is also the author of a fantasy series and the Poetry Editor of Atticus Review. For more information and an embarrassing childhood photo, visit www.troublewithhammers.com.
