by Carol Alena Aronoff
for adoption. Not oil, not
chickens–children.
Is birth control next
to be sacrificed on the altar
of false piety–our bodies
offered up to the state?
Anger–too small a word to
contain my feelings of betrayal,
despair at the sufferings, deaths
to come, at memories triggered:
Of being told to steal a diaphragm off
the doctor’s desk because he couldn’t
prescribe contraceptives in sixties’
Boston even to a married woman.
Of being molested by a Harley Street
physician as I lay on the table awaiting
an abortion, of being told he was doing
sex research as I must be a loose woman.
After years of struggle, lost and damaged
lives, are we once again commodities
to be exploited, trees forced to bear fruit,
to be plucked and plundered, driven
underground to early and unmarked graves?
Carol Alena Aronoff, Ph.D. is a psychologist, teacher and poet. Her work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and won several prizes. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Carol has published 4 chapbooks (Cornsilk, Tapestry of Secrets, Going Nowhere in the Time of Corona, A Time to Listen) and 6 full-length poetry collections: The Nature of Music, Cornsilk, Her Soup Made the Moon Weep, Blessings From an Unseen World, Dreaming Earth’s Body (with artist Betsie Miller-Kusz) as well as The Gift of Not Finding: Poems for Meditation. Currently, she resides in rural Hawaii.