This week’s poem, Jillian Hanson’s “from the card catalog of small griefs: ‘emergency surgery’ ” contemplates the body in the aftermath of a particular minor loss: an appendectomy. I love the speaker’s vivid, imaginative envisioning of her missing organ and the primal tenderness of her act of mourning.

Hanson is a graduate of Stonecoast MFA in poetry at the University of Southern Maine. She writes, leads online writing groups and works as a creative consultant with Blue Sky Black Sheep, all with a view of Sebago Lake out her window and nearby woods to wander in.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

from the card catalog of small griefs: “emergency surgery”
By Jillian Hanson

inside the hilly landscape
of my abdomen, i imagine
each wet shape snug, humming
intricate harmonies, my appendix
fat like the pinkie of a sausage-y hand.
i picture flare, hot swell, how it lit its own
fuse. tired of playing a bit part maybe?
it rigged itself to explode.
wish i’d been awake to see when they
pulled it out, still grimacing. i’d have liked
to bring it home in a cup. instead i find
a gray stone shaped like a porpoise. give
it a lick of my dna, wrap it in birch bark,
tie with red thread. hold it as proxy
in the cradle of my lap, to absorb
the holiness of being halved.
the many violences of survival.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “from the card catalog of small griefs: ‘emergency surgery,’” copyright 2022 by Jillian Hanson, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.

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