This multi-media poetic memoir-documentary of my experience living with endometriosis manifests both the literal and symbolic symptoms of this “woman’s disease.” ENDOME infuses medical records and surgery reports with memories, songs, and dreams, disclosing boundaries and bonds between patient and physician, psyche and soma, and art and science. Endometriosis occurs when the menstrual lining of the womb becomes displaced and is found in other places in the woman’s body, causing her pain and sometimes rendering her infertile. Often this physical displacement is mirrored by the displacement of the suffering woman herself, initially manifesting as dismissal or misdiagnosis by both male and female “experts,” her complaints reduced to a hollow echo in the doctor's chamber. Investigating recent medical cases of women under the knife and physicians under the gun, ENDOME traces the fine lines between malpractice and innovation, quack and visionary, sinner and savior. Even as it closely inspects the scars left by this disease in the body and mind of an individual woman, the poem also undresses the wounds suffered at a collective level by the systematic displacement of the feminine in Western culture, and the barrenness that results. Expanding normative feminist approaches, ENDOME both relays and challenges existing histories and interpretations surrounding the disease, exposing the politically charged complications of identity, authority, and ideology. Certain dangers are exposed which threaten any subject under scrutiny (the patient, the woman, the word) when “worked on” as object in the hands and eyes of those rendering judgment (the doctor, the man, the audience).

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