Jules Gibbs
OVULATION IN TWO PARTS
I.
She’s shrunk and slipped into my pocket again
where she’ll keep shrinking amidst lint and the residue
of pulverized paper scraps worked cloth-like.
I finger the dark seam but she’s too small to hold,
an egg riding a wire, message
un-received, a broken code.
It will all end in crushing, as it always does.
She might fall, pea-sized, out of my embrace,
roll across the linoleum, blown, a dust mote
swept away. Or become lost in my mouth,
mistaken for a grain of rice. I may find her
like a faceless flea, drowned in the wash bucket, a gray sea.



II.
If it’s not this dream it’s my battle
with the orange giant who’s on a killing spree.
I ride his monstrous thigh, thinking my small sex
and new breasts can save the villagers. I’m no more
than a newborn sparrow, a cricket, a bee,
something he could flick away, a trapped voice pleading
the impossible: Giant, down here, c’mon—
you know you want to fuck me.