Poetry by Amy Beth Sisson
PITH VISPO / PITH TRANSLATION (A CONTRAPUNTAL)
Pith Vispo
Pith Translation (A Contrapuntal)
My estimable mother bequeathed her body to science
Where she was anatomized in a medical school lab
As a girl, I loved biographies of doctors. In one,
The proctor slid a glob of fatty flesh into a metal dish.
A student heaved
a severed breast.
Is that what I want for my career?
Elegies for mothers trouble me
I tossed out my infant growth chart
The trashed anguish
Underweight, a failure to thrive
Now I am well fleshed — as was she
Why do I rehearse bitterness remembering her
Who somehow delivered me vaginally
On a metal bed
Like a patient etherized upon a table
Amy Beth Sisson’s (any pronouns) poetry has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Plant-Human Quarterly, Hot Pink Magazine, and others. She is a 2025 winner of the Mendelssohn Chorus’s Joyful Abundance: Emerging Artist Commissioning Program and a 2025 winner of the Lambda Literary J. Michael Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50. Amy Beth is Fence Magazine‘s Steaming (online) visual poetry editor and a board member of Blue Stoop, where she helps with educational programming.
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