Kate Peper




First Sex After the Operation to Create My Vagina

                       You pull me into your cabin and strip me
             in the dark,
the woosh of the toilet
             endlessly filling—

When you penetrated me, everything opened:
          my new vagina blossomed,
                        the black barked trees shook with pale petals,
the deer outside stayed: the buck swayed his antlered head,
        the doe got wet up to her belly from the unmown
                and drizzled grasses.