‘Her Hysterectomy’
— Hannah Cohen
freshly empty home, life
Longleaf Review is a new journal that I’ve kept an eye on, not only for publishing my own work but for consistently showcasing amazing talent in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I was really excited to check out Issue 3, only to be struck by Caitlin Wolper’s short and affecting poem. Eleven lines long, and yet Wolper writes a history of “milkweed drifting” in a space that cannot house anything despite its images of “floorboards” and “white walls”. Eleven lines, and yet I’m reading from the beginning of the poem, wondering how you can “pull…a woman / through” and still be a woman after. Or not. Either way, ‘Her Hysterectomy’ is about a life or not-life “long rotted. [R]emoved.”