Pro-life propaganda occupies
spaces between abandoned lots,
discarded purple, green and yellow beads,
and breached levees, in “places we don’t go,”
down Claiborne Avenue and the Ninth Ward.
She chances the algorithms that will
later say, “CLICK NOW!
Find out if you have Postpartum Depression,”
because she’s been refused treatment,
because her baby is healthy.
Breast milk canals form around
Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex
and esteem subsidence alongside the
Atchafalaya Basin and dredging canals
where coastal shores used to be.
She needs air to breathe,
but chloroprene stings her eyes,
clings to her throat, and breeds
into infertility-causing
carcinogens throughout her body.
Payouts replace regulations
and checks and balances
that would have detected
Postpartum Depression
and vanished cypress trees.
“The Cancer Alley” moniker
becomes a discarded joke
between nutria legislators who focus
instead on unconstitutional 6-week heartbeat
bans for notoriety and false Christians.
She sprays “4-the-birds” liquid
to ward off the Christian male
screaming, “Repent or die, you pro-abortion witch,”
as the fatal fetal abnormality diagnosis
follows her into the clinic.
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Siobhain Lash is a poet and philosopher, raised between Northern Ireland and Reno, Nevada, USA. She received her B.A. in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing, Philosophy, and Psychology from the University of Nevada, Reno (2015). She received her M.A. in Philosophy at Tulane University (2017).
Photo by Jeremy Paige.
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