Wendy Kagan

Arrival

After the yellow bus gathers my girl
and the sun tears through a sky
of rough linen, I make my rounds
in her room, picking up cast-off selves

sweatpant snakeskins and hooded chrysalises
tee-shirt seedpods tossed and crushed
when I see it:

the brown-red trail
dark and carnal, in a twisted
husk of underthings
long tongue (unspeaking, unsung)
that I peel off
and curl
into itself
white sticky dispatch, ready for the bin.

It’s a wonder to know
her blood time has come as mine is
going, that I can pass back
the torch, bright birthright, unspoken
the tender violent splitting
open

the way she arrived, so quickly
tiny sprinter
the midwife nearly missed her
and the doula could only watch
eyes wide as thighs parted
and my girl cleaved her passage
head first and blood-streaked and
roaring into this world.

(First published in The Poetry Distillery)


Blood Sisters

We coveted cuts, self-inflicted pinpricks. A picked scab was kismet, a chance to press our crimson together. By mingling plasma, we sealed our sisterhood. Mere friendship wasn’t enough—we needed that bloodbond written in the skin. Just before AIDS made everyone afraid, we solemnly merged cells: For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Our schoolyard romps revolved around a set of twins, blonde & Gothic, in matching hair bobbles. A mythic closeness we could only imagine. Fate gave us brothers with dirt bikes & cowlicks & smoldering silences. We craved doubleness. Bubble-lettered our longing on scented stationery at sleepaway camp, along the ruffled edges of Maine lakes where the loon would call her lonely call. Bloodoath unbroken. Wounds reaching for each other, soft as pines across the wilderness.

(First published in The Mackinaw: A journal of prose poetry)

About the Author

Wendy Kagan writes in a converted barn in Woodstock, preferably on a loveseat by the wood stove with a cat curled by her feet. She holds a BA in English from Vassar College and an MA in English & Comparative Literature from Columbia University, where she wrote her master’s thesis on the love poetry of Emily Dickinson. Her 2025 chapbook Blood Moon Aria was long-listed for the Yellow Arrow Publishing 2024 chapbook competition and is now available from Red Bird Chapbooks and The Golden Notebook bookstore. More at wendykagan.com.

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