Anodyne Magazine

Maria McLeod is the author of “Skin. Hair. Bones.,”Finishing Line Press 2022, and “Mother Want,” winner of the WaterSedge Poetry Chapbook Contest 2021. She has won the Quarter After Eight Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Prize, the Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes. McLeod’s focus on gender equity and medical treatment has taken the form of fiction, poetry, plays, and scholarly research. Originally from Michigan, she works as a professor of journalism for Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. She received her MFA in poetry from the University of Pittsburgh. Find her on Instagram @mariapoempics.…

As we considered the submissions to Anodyne Magazine, Vol.6, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the medical gaze theory put forth by French philosopher Michel Foucault. The “medical gaze,” according to Foucault, is a form of objectification shaped by doctors and medical institutions focused on the body as the site of illness, requiring medical analysis, an act which takes priority over considering the patient’s subjective experience. In other words, in an attempt to treat the patient, the medical professional assumes a dominant posture as the subject (holding the “gaze”) over the person who is ill, rendered passive as the object (gazed upon, scrutinized by their medical provider). It is this dysfunctional subject/object dichotomy that is called into question in the pages of Anodyne in protest and in grief, in…

The softest part of this headache: lipsraw and electric, my hands static shock. Heart line towards God, my mouthfoaming with guilt, spit gurgling to be Forgiven for my trespasses. These daysare long like eternity’s pointed finger. Once, this guilt was written down in a five-star,my epistle of inky repentance. To church my way out of search history damnation.O Emmanuel, deliver me to straight porn. O Holiness, let me return to Adam, rib maker.Let me return to my knees for all Hims to receive. Once, I buried grief in the same placeas the idea of perpetuity. The nail At the end of the pointed finger,hammered into savior, yet I kneel. Her love, a zephyr and mine, a prayer.Clasped palms. I, swashbuckle. I, subterfuge. I, tylenol smokescreen. I, holy chest of liability.Once…

Bleed out into a pad of finely woven sheeps woolfor the 3rd time in 45 days, after 60 days of not bleeding neverknowing I will feel more animalistic each time Like the lamb, I have no say in this sacrificesoaking into the sheeps wool, I relax my less human bodyexchanging my life blood is a comfort and a sorrow energy flowsboth ways: in and out, then all out I rinse my blood away in Earth cold waterlike every woman who ever stood in a rainstorm fed stream in abubbling springfed brook, washing anything For all of eternity, washing away my youththe stain of womanhood. I am an imperfect circlejust like everything else that is wild…

You didn’t leave whenI explained the disease:degenerative, I said. Incurable,I said, pain. You undressedme, kissed every inchof traitor skin, promisedI would never be toomuch. Three years lateryou buried yourselfin comic books. I beggedfor help with bills, spentmy Sundays and halfmy paycheck in the ERto make this failing bodyrise. Some nights, I tooktoo many pills, and waited.For what? Death? God?An intervention? A handupon mine to tell meto stop? One July night it camedown to why I did not take youwhale-watching. I said I’m tiredof you not having a joband you fired back I’m tiredof taking care of you.There it was: the delayedaction. There it was: the bombI thought I had defused. I dashedto the bathroom to breathe.You followed, you knewwe were done, you saidI didn’t mean it. But you did.I did…

she’ll believe what her mind says, for a while. after all, howcould she not? hadn’t she beenprepped her whole lifefor this moment? being handed bleach blonde Barbies and toldto play nicely, that if a boy is hitting you in the arm heactually likes youand everyone can touch you and hold you and you’re going to growupto be so gosh darn pretty listen todaddy now you need to getgood grades and go to college but you probably can’t be aCEO or a nuclear scientistdon’t be ambitious, that’s not ladylikeyour deepest dream should be just to existas mom as wifethere there sweetheart take someeyeliner and some nail polish you know thatyou only matter if you’re wantedso go ahead now watch america’s next top model with all your galpalsand be a cheerleader for…