Maundy Thursday at Planned Parenthood

On Maundy Thursday my lover
drives me to Planned Parenthood in East Austin.

If I am pregnant and want to end this, I must drive
across the vast, dry territories of West Texas

to a clinic in New Mexico.
Or order pills in the mail

before this is made criminal, too.
A sovereign body is an outlaw body.

Mandatum novum. This is the origin of the word
Maundy. A new command I give you: Love one another

the Teacher said at the Last Supper.
The clinic is empty except for one young woman

in a tight, black dress speaking Spanish
with the receptionist who drew perfect cat-eye liner

around her lashes. There were once protestors
surrounding this place, shouting with signs

and violent prayers. Now there is only the dull hum
of the television in the corner.

We once gathered herbs to cure
what men make. Ancient Egyptian women

fashioned a paste of unripe acacia fruit
with bitter melon, honey and dates

wrapped in leaves to place inside their wombs,
restore the course of blood.

Protest is a garden rich with roots and berries,
potions to make a woman belong to herself again.

If he were here, the Christ would bend to his knees,
gently lift the hems of our dresses and wash our feet.

Brooke Axtell is the author of the memoir Beautiful Justice and received the Phyllis Smart-Young Prize for Poetry (University of Wisconsin). Her writing has been published in Gathered Light: The Poetry of Joni Mitchell’s Songs and SPIN. She holds an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and lives in Austin, TX.

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently MOTHER WATER ASH (LSU Press 2024) and the forthcoming TRASH (Alice James Books 2027).  Her awards include The Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, and a NJ Council for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and literary translation at Queens College, City University of New York.