WHY DO DOCTORS IGNORE THE CLITORIS?

a found poem by Diane Kendig

derived from the article “Half the World Has a Clitoris: Why Don’t Doctors Study It?” by Rachel E. Gross, The New York Times, October 17, 2022

Anatomy of the Clitoris and Penis—3D Model available from Etsy.

Compare the vulva

to a small town in the Midwest.

Doctors tend to pass through it

barely looking up

on their way to their destination,

the cervix and uterus.

If the vulva…is

an underappreciated city

the clitoris is

a local roadside bar

…a deep structure,

made up largely

of erectile tissue

reaching into the pelvis

encircling the vagina.

Documented injuries to the clitoris

could be prevented…

if doctors just spent more time

getting to know the clitoris,

…intimately bound up

in female pleasure and orgasm,

not high on medicine’s priority list.

[One urologist] recalled that

in medical training

the clitoris barely made

a cameo.

The medical textbook

Last’s Anatomy omitted

the clitoris entirely.

Descriptions of the penis went on for pages.

Diane Kendig is the author of five poetry collections. Her latest is Woman with a Fan. Her writing has appeared in J Journal, Wordgathering, The New Verse News, Valparaiso Review, and other journals. She ran a prison writing workshop in Ohio for 18 years, and now curates the Cuyahoga County Public Library weblog, Read + Write. 

THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE SUMMARIZES HIS PARTY'S TAKE-AWAYS FROM THE SENSITIVITY TO GENDER DIFFERENCES SEMINAR

by Michael Brockley

Cartoon by Paul Szep

I think I speak for my colleagues when I say we’ve profited from today’s session. Most of us have friends, even family members, who are proud Vagina-Americans. So let’s agree to put the finer points about consensual and legitimate rape in the round file cabinet. Let’s pledge to redouble our efforts to create a society where our feminist friends and other unattractive women can access the mainstream success stories we take for granted. By starting small businesses, for instance, making gingerbread cookies or doilies and then expanding until they’re competing with Famous Amos and Walmart. I foresee a time when dozens of our members have mommy parts. Free market women with empty nests and a knack for memorizing the Good Book will stand beside us against minimum wage socialism, interspecies marriage and bans on the private ownership of drones. No doubt Code Pink has neutered American men, so we’re going to have to mothball bills requiring rape insurance until the deep pockets put our fat boy in the White House. And let’s not muddy the waters with any off-the-cuff remarks about rape being a gift from God. We can mend some fences by giving teachers merit pay. A hundred bucks. My better half always warns me against bringing gifts that come with electrical cords and surprises that run on batteries. Maybe the NRA can discount those pink snub noses I saw advertised last Christmas. I don’t think a dollop of estrogen poses any danger to our objectives. But I was surprised to discover 54% of voters prefer to leave the toilet seat down so they don’t fall in. Almost half. Who knew?


Michael Brockley works as a school psychologist in rural northeast Indiana. Several of his poems have previously appeared in The New Verse News. In 2013, he had poems accepted by the Indiana Humanities' tribute to National Poetry Month, the Borderlands Project: Eastern Poems and the Vonnegut Library Literary Magazine.