to feel more like a woman on a Cosmopolitan cover magazine selling chocolate diet pills and soft men. My sister’s vanilla cashmere cream says I will glow better, scents pain with supermarket cupcakes.
One day after, I am prescribed antiseptic skin soap, used sparingly to sterilize the body for cutting. I refuse to go under as patient, chatting to my anesthesiologist like two girls getting ready for prom.
My dreams last one blue hued morning, noon sun sends me back as a mannequin, adorned and heavy.
*
Notes on RX
Living is strange — C.D. Wright
Monday you shake three bottles, peer at cylinders with novelty.
One is rust, the other metallic blue. The biggest tastes synthetic, screams illness.
Tuesday you think about your relationship with Big Pharma.
You are due for a refill, chat with the robot medical assistant.
Jolene, the nurse your age, says your insurance rejected your needs.
Switches you to a generic brand, promises it’s all the same.
Wednesday is pharmacy trip after daylight.
Small talk with striped purple hair looks-like-Nancy, bitching about the economy.
She calls antidepressants placebo, tells you to enjoy them while they work.
At the front of the line, you recite your identity.
Opt out of automatic refills, your bloodstream revolting.
*
American Sonnet Of My Body’s Cross-Sectional Images On A Computed Tomography Scan
You’re going to feel like you have to pee but don’t worry, the nurse says. It tastes like the color blue, warmly relentless. My throat makes a run for it. My bad parts bathe in snow colored mud. I’ve become a doctor for killing what’s small. Faux plant on my windowsill. Sickened fruit fly. My own leaves— blue enters me, bursting ice caps melting cherry red. Paints me aged magenta, leaves me unseen— I swallow a kind of ending, shimmery metal.
*
Valerie Braylovskiy is a poet from the Bay Area and the author of Half-Life, a chapbook by Alien Buddha Press. As a Canterbury Scholar at Santa Clara University, she is developing a poetry manuscript exploring chronic illness and womanhood.
