The Other Day I Peed On a Stick

and when I peed on the stick I knew my blood was like poison.
When I turned 18, I had just started my medication, I peed on a stick, called a number
from the phone book to see if I could afford an abortion without anyone knowing.
It was a pro-life group with a deceptive name, the woman begging me to keep the baby.

So I told my mother. The doctor she took me to stuck his head in the room, said
“Congratulations, you’re pregnant.”
Shut the door. The woman who filled out my outtake form rattled on about her midwife.
Her face changed. “You’re happy about this, right?”
She slowly drew hearts around her midwife’s name.

I wished those hearts could work some sort of magic —

make my blood less like the poison I was just beginning to know.
My mother’s aunt died of a back alley abortion. My mother wrote a poem about it called, “Floating,” because as she bleeds to death she is floating above the pain. Or maybe it was the ether that killed her. All sorts of things could kill you from an abortion back then.

At 22 my mother’s future mother-in-law said, “I can get you an abortion, but you have to say you’re crazy.” But my mother wanted him. In fact, my mother has wanted every pregnancy, especially the miscarriage. She has his mobile hanging above her bed. A group of tiny ceramic bears in bowties that clink sweetly, quietly.

The other day I peed on a stick and when I peed on the stick
I knew my blood was like poison, but without my medication, I’ll go crazy.
I’ll never be the girl in the movie who throws up, pees on a stick, then says,
honey? I’m pregnant! And runs to her lover. Buys bitty shoes. Buys bitty hats.

I’ll never read aloud to my belly, then deny doing such a silly thing.
I won’t look into a tiny face and see a glimmer of me, of my mother, of my husband.
I won’t be looking at someone I will love forever. Someone to give the world to.
Someone for whom I’d make sure the world was something to fall in love with.

Trump is the President-elect. I peed on a stick and when I peed on the stick I knew
my blood was like poison and I’d spare a child all sorts of deformity, sickness.
I waited the two minutes you have to wait, wondering, what if he changes everything?
What if someday I can’t get an abortion, my blood like poison?

Will we use the phrase “back alley,” keep notes for other women of doctors who perform
the operation? Could I become a story my nephews tell? Another aunt with a tragic end? Will I float above the pain? Right out of the world I’d try to make magical for my child if my blood was nothing, wasn’t anything like poison.

By Rae Rose

This poem originally appeared in Writers Resist.

Bake Challah in Heels

By Rae Rose

Martha Stewart would run for her life.
I twist dough into snakes, slam them on countertop.
Teacups rattle. I scream. All over the world,
Jewish women are braiding bread –
how do they do it so damn holy?
It wasn’t God I thought of when I punched this dough,
but a man who tricked me, a man before that,
and the first man – maybe I did think of God.
I punched someone’s dough face.

Out my window – a woman without a home
sleeps under a bridge. I punched whoever built this city,
invented these laws. How do holy women do it?
Pretty heads bowed over ovens, aprons dusted with sugar,
a sweet smile on every rosy face.
My kitchen? Hiroshima made of flour.
Egg shells litter counters as if I am a red-tailed hawk
stealing from nests, cracking eggs with beak –
can you create something holy if you are angry?
When God (supposedly) made the world, was He furious?
Is that why He made everything in the dark,
was He too scared to look?

I separate Challah, ripping out a piece of dough
like I am ripping out an eye –
that eye that saw his last trick,
that eye that saw me pull at my veins like cats cradle
and scrub my flesh with Brillo pads,
I am pulling out that eye – that stain – that hurt – from this braided body that is now so – so –

curvy. So female.


I use my fingertips,
glaze Challah with egg whites.
It shimmers like moonlight hugging curves.
The heat will harden her, thicken her skin.
She will be able to take it. Take anything.
Pull down the moon– my moon –
– my light – my curves – my invention –
I am reinventing woman. My own recipe – no rib required.
I have created something holy in a world
in which everything was already invented for me. Poorly.
This time I will change.
I look at the woman under the bridge.
Maybe this time, we’ll change everything.

Previously published in Contemporary World Poetry Journal.

Learning to Walk in Two Worlds

By Rae Rose

Skinny as tree limbs,
we began to grow curves
as if we were turning
into musical instruments.
We hid our mandolin hips
in big shirts as we walked,
picking plums, making up songs.
We counted –
if a car passed us three times
we’d find a place to hide.
At the corner store men stared,
spoke words I will never repeat.
“Have You Seen Us?” flyers,
stuffed into our mailboxes,
began to make sense.
Girls’ body parts were found
in canyons, in creek-beds.
Oprah said to yell fire, not rape,
strangers will help fight a fire.
We were learning to walk in two worlds.
We were learning to hide from men.
A plum’s skin was warm and bitter,
a plum’s flesh sweeter than we expected.
Blossoms in our hair, we sang,
juice trickled down our chins.
We threw plum pits
into canyons, into creek-beds,
tiny skulls wasps hunted.
Life is chance. We learned
some trees are touched by fire,
some bear fruit.

Previously published in Contemporary World Literature, February 2011

Sometimes A Man Comes Back From War

like shadow –
himself, but different.
Some kind of science fiction,
Invasion of The Body Snatchers.

Same body, sometimes.
Same eyes – used up,
inkwells that can't be refilled.

His fingers know how to touch wire
and explode, or –
sometimes he comes back,

war stuck to his shoes,
he drags it inside,
right over the welcome mat.

Sometimes his family
huddles like sheep.
Eyes shut so tight

it aches.
We bought him a war,
he sometimes comes back

all shadow,
footsteps like gunfire
up the hall, down the hall.

By Rae Rose

Previously published in Protestpoems, December 2010

Men Who Should Have Loved Me

By Rae Rose

My history professor - in your adorable
black shirts and that strange click
of your jaw that made you so thirsty.
You said, "A one world Utopia sounds genocidal"
and I almost dropped my pen.
You blushed when you cursed, called my writing a joy
and snuck looks down my cleavage in your office.
Room Q 19, fourth floor.
Your wife grows peppers and keeps chickens.
She asks you to go to the store when you're out of plums.

Saxophone player - all dimple,
all clever smile.
You loved my hair short and curly, drank with me at the bar
and your wife never came to a show,
well, once.
Once she did. In tennis shoes with the laces
untied and huge white tube socks
and I called her "Socks" to feel better about myself,
but it didn't work. You told me about your quiet Halloween,
cuddling and handing candy out to kids
and I can't imagine her like that,
but I'm wrong. I hate that memory. Yours.

Kevin Beck in 1st - 8th grade.
We were the funny redheads.
The first note you wrote to me as an adult
was from jail. You shot a cop.
I stared at the return address. You said you missed me.
Everything was misspelled. There wasn't any punctuation.
I wrote back. You didn't.


The man who called me "Honey." Just that sound! Honey.
You bought me dresses and nachos.
I didn't love you either.
You call me now, back from France
and a mental break down. Your therapist says hi.

Oh Freddie, you idiot.


Published in The Raleigh Review, October 2010