Ultrasound: My Body in the Yellow Breeches Creek
by Vanessa Abraham
after George David Clark
Breech baby, born
into this water-world feet-first.
A creek is a cold womb:
shivering fetus suspended
in a limestone stream of amniotic fluid.
A bank cleaving
from land is an empty tomb—
Virginia, Ophelia.
Underbelly ultrasound:
a riverbed is still a place to rest
among half-smoked cigarettes
and decaying cans drained of Bud Light—
fool’s gold in the dying
summer sunlight.
Against the jagged river rock,
I scraped my knees
and skinned my shins;
a child comes of age
in watershed time.
At the bottom of this creek
is my first kiss, spit mixing
in my sandy brown stomach,
silt deposits of seventeen years
swept along with forgotten shoes,
plastic bottles, Lay’s packaging,
cast-offs of the living things.
Last night, I dreamt I drowned
in the Yellow Breeches,
swollen belly of adolescence
lost under those rusty bridges.
Let my memories decompose
among the leeches.