Woman Turned Inside Out
by Alysse Kathleen McCanna
The doctor asks
if it’s okay
for the intern
to be in the room
Girl says yes because she is young
doesn’t want to displease, disrupt
The room is white, glinting metal caught
in florescence, half-closed shades
betraying a litter-strewn park
This is what a healthy pink
vagina looks like
the doctor says
to the intern
Girl will hold this compliment
inside for a long time
even when, as Woman, her hands are raw-
pink from dishy soapwater, her body strange,
turned inside out like a housewife’s yellow gloves
like a blossom or a wallet
or a womb, a nicer word
than uterus—too raw,
too empty, such a nicer word
than matrix or mold, pear or purse. Why
pink? Why is pink compliment?
A man she loved, of goodish devillooks,
said he loved her pink and also her mind
but what he really meant was I am lucky you are
so blind to the bruise
that is my love
sting-pink and singing
high note of honor
Woman standing in line at the gas station
smells the aftermath of a cologne so
familiar yet untraceable
that she flees, throws up
in the parking lot
Asphalt home to half-cigarettes,
Styrofoam, now the body’s memory:
pink on the blacktop
bird flown from cage
the body’s language, a shout
that becomes a kind of singing.