Poetry by Erica Anderson-Senter

               ​kelly bell photography CC


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SITTING ON MY GRANDMA’S NORTH PORCH AFTER MY HYSTERECTOMY
                                                                                                     epistolary to my body 

You hold my bones and blood river-winds the north 
and south of us. You hurt right now — we hurt. 
There is no sadness like a taking,
and gentle body, we have endured a wild taking. 

Songbird, sick on her feeder, is the baby we lost.
Bleeding down our leg is the lover who left. 
Also, the drowned kitten is the baby who died. 
The dead doe in July heat is us, in the hospital, 
waking out of humming anesthesia. My dumb-tongue
confusion stumbling out of anesthesia, scared. Starved 
baby is the baby who stopped growing. An empty bed 
is the lover who split. Inhumane slaughter: all of this taking
and all of this leaving and the uterus lame, useless 
                                                                                                          gone. 
But you, color of dried chamomile, my sweet body,  
you and I glitter in the sun — tiny hairs holding 
light, stars in the afternoon, while the clematis
sways in tender wind. My grandma
opens the door to come sit. Quiet and near me.


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Erica Anderson-Senter lives and writes in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She teaches high school English and creative writing. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, the once CrabFat Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Off the Coast, and Dialogist among others. Her chapbook, seven days now, was published by The Dandelion Review. Her first full length collection, Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism, is available through EastOver Press. Erica hosts free literary events throughout her city to bring poetry to the public. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing through the Writing Seminars at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont.

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