Mihaela Mihailova

Teratoma (n.)—benign tumor full of developed tissue

Hers was a pack of canines
in her lower back.
Clinical analysis yielded
the following possible explanations:

1.     A memo
(sealed, bio-degradable):
assigned rapacious at birth;
monitor regularly; at risk
for auto-cannibalism.

2.     A genetic record:
survivalist DNA gone haywire,
mandibular memories of
(in historical order)
famine, war rations, salt coupons, black market baby formula,
erupting in compensatory calcium.

3.     A forensic report:
the catastrophe her mother,
skin still orange from the iodine,
fed to her umbilically, the fallout
pooling at her spinal column.

4.     A tribute:
to all of us, post-Bloc
abomination gamma babies,
erupting
like radiothropic fungi
in the terra atoma.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Mihaela Mihailova was born and raised in Bulgaria. She is an animation studies scholar, researcher and educator at San Francisco State University. Her edited volume, Coraline: A Closer Look at Studio LAIKA's Stop-Motion Witchcraft (Bloomsbury, 2021), won The Norman McLaren/Evelyn Lambart Award for Best Edited Collection in Animation. She edits Animation Studies, an open-access online peer reviewed journal dedicated to the history, theory, and aesthetics of animated media. Her poetry has appeared in Thimble Literary Magazine.