Sara Biggs Chaney's first chapbook, Precipice Fruit, was released in October 2013. Her second chapbook, Ann Coulter's Letter to the Young Poets, is forthcoming from dancing girl press in 2014. Chaney’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Whiskeypaper, Menacing Hedge, Spork Press, and The Adroit Journal. Chaney blogs here. ---------
The First Time I Bled, I Didn’t Stop
That summer in Russia
my first blood ran strong
twelve days and nights.
On the train from Helsinki,
I sheathed my new body
in a cramped bunk bed
and waited for the end
but the white night
flowed on.
In St. Petersburg,
on the great sea sidewalks,
in front of the basilica,
north of the Winter Palace,
the air snapping green,
hungry feet looking for harbor,
I bled on my new thighs
without any sign of stopping.
Even my father was humble,
standing in the crumbled archway,
with a strange smile, near shy,
and a handful of crumpled napkins,
as I bled through to morning.
He said nothing of death,
though the blood ran so thick
I was afraid to stand—
My center, a hemorrhage
all the life still ahead.