2 poems by Jessica Mookherjee 

Cervix

I listened to Professor Robert Sapolsky on a podcast and remembered

life is a process of remembering. I am epigenetically stressed—

my grandmother's famine coded in my cells. Everything is heating up

and there's no one left for me to love. I want to believe in aliens

and sometimes I see angels in the air if I squint hard enough.

They shrug, say we gave you the warning signs, sent poems.

You ignored us for safety, beer, the comfort of your cars.

I’m full of cortisol. I was listening to Robert Sapolsky on the podcast

saying free will's an illusion. Each of these words is inevitable.

None of my sisters or I have borne a child. What beautiful round

wombs we have too, I have been complimented on my childbearing

hips and well proportioned cervix. Now I know it wasn't me who decided

not to have babies, but the sea, the fertile rain, the devastated world.

Mantle

It came on in strips after the third child.

How can she keep this from happening?

Layer upon layer she put on. Until none

of her clothes fit. If she could grow big

then she would be a planet. Only the most

powerful god could bed Ceres. But the core

of her disappeared inside the world, those red

pips still cropped up with blood and soil.

She will not tell of her desire. For the

biggest god of all is listening.

__________________

Jessica Mookherjee is a British poet of Bengali heritage and grew up in Wales and London, now lives in Kent. Her second collection Tigress was shortlisted for the Ledbury Munthe Prize in 2021 and she was twice highly commended for best single poem in the Forward Prize.