In that moment I wonder
   was Freud right after all,
is the female nothing, nothing
   but the absence of the male?
Am I real or a black void
   of soft, organic warmth,
depersonalized fecundity, animal blood,
   alien slime, not a person,
only provisional consciousness
   that moves towards food and spawns
my animal brood? A black earth field,
   bog soil, ready for seed, but not,
never, no, never autonomous.
   A collection of parts: skin,
soft, moist openings, hair, nails,
   bones, cartilage. Not ever a sum
greater than its parts.

First published in Residual Heat under my pseudonym Aga Black.

• Newer: Translating Big Potatoes: A Kind of Review of Embryology by Magdalena Abakanowicz
• Older: Intercourse