The Cannibal Replies to Your Text
It must have been hard, growing up with transparent skin,
when even then, no one wanted to look at your still-beating heart,
your outstanding insides
rotting in rainbow colors.
Everyone else was getting X-rays
and ultrasounds, all the lovers dying and diagnosing to see
just a glimpse of each other’s organs,
while you stood there, little spring roll,
entrails bared for the world to see,
and the world closed its eyes.
You must have wanted someone with a hungry gaze
and a surgeon’s knife, desperate for every contour
of your capillaries, for the images pressed
where your viscera spooned;
someone to uncover what you thought
coverless, to love what you thought
unloveable, to wear your marrow as a lipstick
where everyone has to see.
I see why you came to me.
Eclectic Love Poem
My creme brûlée, my torch,
my spoon, my plate
armor, my coat of arms
and torso, there is nothing so cuddly-cozy
as you, or even the thought of you,
nestled in my brain
like a lobotomist’s tool.
You are my ice pick, my only ice pick!
I am your glacier, your frozen
caveman. You turn my prison
into glitter-water, you free me
from myself, my alchemist,
my archeologist, my
constellation-connect-the-dots.
You are my ice pick and my ice box
with the plums, you are the poem about the
plums, you are every poem
written in words or ink or bark-pulp
on cave walls. You are every sonnet,
even the poor ones,
which still moved somebody’s heart
enough to be written,
and I can’t imagine a heart-movement
that wasn’t because of you.
after Jaswinter Bolina
Aimee Lowenstern is a twenty-four year old poet living in Nevada. She has cerebral palsy and is fond of glitter. Her work can be found in several literary journals, including BreakBread Magazine and Little Patuxent Review.
