ABORTION

I hated it; I expect everyone secretly did.

I hadn’t yet seen blood besides my own,
and then only from a knee or finger.

Posters were distributed according to age:
I was six, and so given the six-week photo.
The adults got second

or third trimester blowups.
We split up, to catch the cars both ways.
One poster featured a twenty-two-week fetus, its head held
by latexed fingers, an American quarter

sitting in the surrounding blood,
flipped to the side that said
In God We Trust. Sometimes we’d share the highway
with craftspeople selling wooden elves, or wooly welcome mats,
or tiny tin houses glued with dried flowers and fruit.

The gravel shoulder was bright with trash,
and drivers sometimes spat or tossed takeout,
but it was only twice a year, this protest of
The New Holocaust, as my poster proclaimed,
and soon enough I could be ...