Pam Sinicrope
My Teratoma
The doctor tells me
my teratoma looks like a pocket
of bones and cartilage, bulging
with hair, bright yellow, fat-rich.
This random mutation gone rogue
will not cease fabricating.
I name him Donald and he talks
to my lady parts while I sleep:
Pocahontas…bimbo…
I treat ‘em like shit…
by the pussy…you can
do anything if you’re rich…
blood coming out of her wherever…
and though the odds of cancer
are small, he continues
to amplify and twist
my ovary.
Donald must leave.
The surgeon dissects and strips it
layer-by-layer, the chambers of teeth,
tailbone and hair, scrapes it into a tiny bag,
suctions the remaining seepage, the process
is long and labored, but necessary
to prevent infection and sepsis.
I trace across
the ridge of scar, remember
how his half-formed phrases punctured
into ears and eyelids.
Later, he becomes nothing
but a case report, haploid parts
floating in formaldehyde,
confetti in a sea of apoplexy.
The doctor tells me he is
gone, was not malignant.
The doctor also tells me
he could grow back.
—Submitted on 01/08/2021
Pam Sinicrope‘s poems have appeared in 3 Elements Review, Appalachian Journal, Literary Mama, and other journals. among others. She is a student in the low residency MFA program at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, and lives in Rochester, Minnesota.
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