Tag: Katherine West
THE SECRET
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.” –Robert Frost In Poland, a young woman is having her blood tested for abortion medication. The test comes out positive, and the police escort her to jail. You are not interested in the news. Read more
WHEN YOU ARRIVE
You have wandered this road for a long time. You have left versions of yourself along the way, like sluffed off skins of earlier snakes. There are times when longing pulls you back to examine the scraps of tissue paper skin that hint at the nature of these other selves. Read more
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING A CIRCLE
You swim up to me pulled in by the tide of my thighs You are a minnow in the labyrinth of breast and belly round and round you fin until you reach the lacuna of my navel the cleft of my entrance the cave of generation where you lie on Read more
THE ONLY JUSTICE
Butterflies on the butterfly bush bees on the rosemary flowers— It could almost be summer It could almost be 1983 me on retreat in a bikini reading Moby Dick in Provincetown, Mass. It could almost be me notebook and leaky ballpoint in hand, trying to say what can’t be said Read more
LEGISLATING SEX
Teenagers in Texas can no longer get birth control on their own. The logic of this escapes me just as it did when I was a teenager and my step-father stole my birth control pills out of my purse. He did not want the shame of a pregnant teenage daughter, Read more
BODY JUSTICE 1977
The university doctor examined me. Then all of his students examined me. “As you can see,” he explained, “the uterus is tipped, making bringing a fetus to term unlikely.” After I had dressed and sitting in his office we had a conversation. “The risk of miscarriage is high.” “I’ve already Read more
KITCHEN JUSTICE
Mom was in the kitchen. Dad had just driven up. “Girls set the table,” she called up to us. “C’mon,” I said, tugging at my older sister’s sleeve. “It doesn’t take two,” she answered, not looking up from her book. She was reading Dune, again. “C’mon, please, you know what Read more