This was by far the hardest word. It came about when I was at a wine bar with my person and Dean was our server: he got my attention when he used a paper cup to pour my second glass of wine back into our bottle. He told us that he had two 18-year-old dachshunds who died seven days apart. Their names? Weinus and Spanky.
The Stranger: Dean
The Word: Spanky
The poem I wrote:
There has lived a man in my body before,
this small one, 1500 days old. Once he swam
like a fish inside my belly. Unimaginable
that I have no interior part named
for him, yet I bear other men’s names:
Fallopian tubes, Gartner’s ducts, hydatid
of Morgagni, Pouch of Douglas. Fixed
like flags by mapmakers unable to forgo
their hunger to own. I could name a part,
a secret on your skin, a spanky: it would be
just a word to mark some cells that turn daily
over, temporary as any point, as any ocean.
The Challenge: Do you have a poem in you on this word? Write one here.