Conyer Clayton | Those who need to hear this won’t listen. | Poets Resist

Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa based artist who aims to live with compassion, gratitude, and awe. Her most recent chapbooks are Trust Only the Beasts in the Water (above/ground press, 2019), / (post ghost press, 2019), Undergrowth (bird, buried press, 2018) and Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press, 2018). She released a collaborative album with Nathanael Larochette, If the river stood still, in August 2018. She won Arc’s 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, performs sound poetry with Quatuor Gualuor, and writes reviews for Canthius. Her debut full-length collection of poetry, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite, is forthcoming Spring 2020 with Guernica Editions.

Conyer Clayton's Website

Also by Conyer Clayton: If the river stood still a dream Trust Only the Beasts in the Water

Poets Resist
Edited by Sneha Subramanian Kanta
December 12, 2019

Conyer Clayton

Those who need to hear this won’t listen.

The small white pill melted slowly on my tongue. It softened my cervix, but hardened my will. I won't stay married to my mistakes, a curdling thing that needed to live so I could realize what needed to die. My life would be worse if I hadn't done it. The cord that bound us untearable, thick-fleshed. Are you sure? I cried. A procedural pinch deep in my belly. Little pinch now. Nondescript ceiling. Big pinch now. A nurse held my hand. Are you ready? Are you sure? I cried. Loss tinged with relief. A hard blessing for tubes and cotton swabs. A soft one for accessibility. All tests showed a tight-clamped future. Are you sure? Those who don't believe this won't believe me. I cried harder when the little stick turned blue than when the doctor said That's it. If you bleed for more than 48 hours come back to the hospital. I only bled for an afternoon, lounging on my couch, emboldened by the realization of choice, my choice, my life and my power to choose in it, my power to leave anything that needs leaving. This is what happens when you get an abortion in a country where you can get an abortion: You go to a hospital. You talk to a nurse for an hour. You examine every detail of your life. They ask Are you sure? over and over and over again. If you're sure, you take the pill. You sit with others waiting for their cervix to soften. Sometimes people are crying. Most people are not. You wait for an hour or more. Your name is called and you enter a room. You sit in another room until you feel ready to leave. Forever, someone is asking Were you sure? They told me I'd be nauseous as the drugs wore off. Don't drink or eat. But giddy, I had three graham crackers, and I was fine.

My poem, “Those who need to hear this won’t listen.” is about my abortion, and the good it did me. I recently became a dual Canadian-American citizen. I grew up in the southern United States, in Kentucky. I moved to Canada when I was 25, and shortly after, had an abortion. It was, politically and medically speaking, a non-event. As this happened in my life, I watched from afar as my friends and loved ones back in Kentucky and the U.S. had their rights slowly stripped away. Had I stayed in Kentucky, would I have been politically forced to have this child? Would I have been berated and shamed as I walked into the clinic? This poem is a reflection on those circumstances, and how even in a country where abortion is unquestionably legal, there is still a degree of stigma.