Rae Spencer’s most recent poem to appear here was The Waiting Songs, published as part of Contributor Series 9: If Men Had Ears.
The Congresswoman’s Brain
By Rae Spencer
it’s literal now, our interest
fixed on her anatomy
no longer the simple concerns
of platform and policy
her silenced voice representing
this widened constituency
discussing the bullet’s path
in perplexed grief
awed by her survival
and involved, so breathlessly
involved, eager that the hateful
act leave much intact, the wife
and mother parts of her
the independent woman
preserved somewhere
in that swaddle of sterile
bandage, skull in waiting
while the surgeon monitors
her most intimate organ
the unsolved hemisphere of self
violated, prognosis unclear
and our only certainty is shame
for the commonplace violence
we’ve shared too often
morbid details of tissue
and test, the answering gesture
updated hourly for signs
of hope, for progress to suggest
that such a public and fearsome
wound might heal
Great poem and great commentary.