Juliet Cook

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Ovarian Follies

I was cutting & pasting the contents of my latest diorama.
It was the pinking shears and red-painted papier mache phase
when I felt them twinging, pinging, plotting, besotting
and then my ovaries jumped ship. Itty bitty mutineers,

they giggled and slid down the laundry chute
and stained all my frilly panties, one random pair
of socks. They fled the house, gently bleeding;
seeking grandiose adventures and thrills.

At first my ovaries stuck together like tiny Siamese twins.
If anyone pinned them with a mean gaze, they played dead
or posed as suspicious masses of gelignite.
Reports flooded in of misshapen lumps

in the street. Drivers thought they were bits of road kill
until they skittered away. "It did not skitter," claimed one woman
on the local news. "It moved like a hairless caterpillar, contracting
at warp speed and I felt a flutter like butterflies in my stomach.

Carnivorous butterflies. Tearing at my . . ." cut to commercial break.
I left a small dish of milk on the back porch and my ovaries returned
most nights. It turned out they were nocturnal
or almost never needed sleep. They loved to frolic

and splash in the bird bath as the neighbor lady’s matronly brassieres dangled
on the line, eyeing my ovaries disdainfully, murmuring in their haughtiest tones,
"Do her ovaries have no shame?" and "Ovaries are meant to be kept contained."
I glared at the bras and flashed them my sharpest scissors, my unsupported tits.

My ovaries drifted apart as one of them developed an unsettling reputation
for histrionic mumbo jumbo; the other became known for oddly obscure pranks.
It grew more and more spherical until it transformed into a magic 8 ball
and answered every question with the word squiggly.

The smaller ovary visited the milk dish more frequently,
sometimes appearing so cold and forlorn that I built a diorama-sized bed
with a special spongy pillow. I even considered petting her,
but then she might think I was inviting her to purr

her way back inside my womb. Into my fragile bone
china teacup, onto my high gloss black serving tray, alongside hot
buttered crumpets and curdled cream. Soon it was time for my ovaries to sing.
My ovaries live in concert! Squiggly on stage, cooing her creepy

mezzo soprano operetta while the runt hovered above
the balcony seat, peeking through her crooked monocle and sighing
like a poor little orphaned ovary. She was such an adorable specimen.
Oh, how my fallopian tubes ached to embrace her, choke her, swallow her whole.