Poetry by Geula Geurts
I say when the surgeon removes his blue mask to ask me
how I want to be closed up again. My arms spread out to the sides,
the operating table is the cross I bear, the cold room
is Jerusalem air, the hairs on my edges stand up in prayer.
There’s not much time to consider the question, and I figure
staples mean more twisting of skin down the line.
I close my eyes while I sense a dull tugging at the strings
of my belly. What do my organs smell like open to the air?
Blood corroding like metal, the rusting muscles of my uterus
losing herself to oxygen. The many layers of me sewn up like a rag doll,
a secondhand toy my daughter will play with for how long?
And what does dissolvable even mean? What unfair material
disappears like that? Stitches of thin wind. A chosen son rising up
like dust from a burial cave. Threads made of catgut. Or sheep,
cow intestines. Animals woven through me. It doesn’t matter
what I choose, my scar is a new companion, a wound of stigmata,
penance for what?
Geula Geurts is a Dutch born poet and essayist living in Jerusalem. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, The Penn Review, Salamander, Juked, Raleigh Review, Radar Poetry and Blood Orange Review, among others. Her lyric essay ‘The Beginnings of Fire’ was named a runner-up in CutBank’s 2020 chapbook competition, and is forthcoming with CutBank Books in Spring 2021. Her mini chapbook ‘Like Any Good Daughter’ was published by Platypus Press. She was named a finalist in the 2018 Autumn House Chapbook Contest and a semifinalist in the 2020 Crab Creek Review Poetry Prize. She is a graduate of the Shaindy Rudolph Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar Ilan University, and works as a literary agent at the Deborah Harris Agency.
Arcturus 