Of Hollows

 

In the body, behind the breast, that retromammary space, a small child digs milk-ducts. Prayer is the nipple as flower bud. Prayer is stomach full of feast. This body holds the uterus by invisible wire, wound like a cocoon, this space an altar. You can hear the lips move against the skin. The body stores memories in the suspended knee-cap, behind the shoulder blade, the crease of the neck as it enters the skull. These memories are tightrope walkers— one wrong move and balance becomes holy and empty all at once.

 
 
 
 
 
minadora-macheret
 

Minadora Macheret is a graduate student at Kansas State University, where she received the Graduate Poetry Award and a Seaton Fellowship. Her poems also recently received the International Sigma Tau Delta Convention Isabel Sparks' Poetry Prize. Her work is forthcoming in Connotation Press and has appeared in Thank You For Swallowing, Sugared Water, Love Me, Love my Belly, and others. She live in Manhattan, KS, with her dog, Aki, and teaches bilingual poetry workshops to children through 4-H.