Poetry For Menstruation

“Many women are singing together of this: …
For this thing the body needs
let me sing
for the supper, 
for the kissing, 
for the correct
yes.”

Anne Sexton

“At all hours, wine
feathered through fabric,
seeping, in sleep
through my shawl and bedroll.
Between thighs, a dark iris
swelled purple,
pruny, oozing
the black dregs
of yesterday’s grape,
at all hours inking my skirt hem,
at all hours siphoning
rosiness from my skin..”

Alexandra Malouf

“I passed by you and saw you kicking around helplessly in your blood. I said to you as you lay there in your blood, Live! I said to you as you lay there in your blood, Live!“

Ezekial 16:6

“Steadily, the bleeding woman recedes further into herself. Her mind wanders backward, creeping away from the present, like an animal retreating from light at the mouth of its cave.”

Camilla Freeman

“You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or played or cried.”

Gwendolyn Brooks

“Daughter
you were gravity, a cosmic glow accreting
lucent skin and heart thumps
sable hair and self.”

Alexandra Malouf

“The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its life
I feel the November
of the body as well as of the calendar.”

Anne Sexton

And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.

And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that power had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.

But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.

Mark 5:25-34

“No reason to be afraid,
my almost mighty doctor reasons.
I nod, thinking that woman’s dying
must come in seasons,
thinking that living is worth buying.”

Anne Sexton

“Woman With Girdle”

Anne Sexton