Conceive Here again—in a room waiting. I’ve become a pin cushion—prick here, prick there. Take fluid out, squirt fluid in. Circles the size of needle points tattoo my skin. The bruised hollow of my elbows look like sin. The other women waiting spin their eyes from my gaze— fix a poker bluff. We all want the same thing, or we wouldn’t be here, perpetually waiting. Fewer than a third will win. We lay our money down, All In.
Gabriella’s work has appeared most recently in The Pinyon Review. She is the second-place winner of the 2014 Yeats Poetry Contest. Gabriella has also had writing published in the award-winning anthology Poetic Voices Without Borders, The Potomac Review, The Dream Catcher’s Song, Avanti Popolo, Folio, The Centrifugal Eye, and Lambda Literary Review, among other places. She works as an artist and teacher in New York City.