Poetry

Chrysalis

Burn
my new tongue
on this old whisper,
a cold burn, continually
cut me, into loving this—salt
and peppering scalp with knotted
fingers, over and over again, so let me
eat this, watch it, there is no solid, no one
voice only me and I, the continual delusion
of wholesomeness, be my vigilante, stalking
synapses for error, I am the ninth edition, I am
the first, editing and reediting,breaking open,
introducing the tenth, this situation is not conducive
to writing so pour me another, pour me ten more, no,
peppermint, the smell of a locker room, a wet room, pad
pad my feet, flicker, stop. This smells like something sweeter,
the aftermath, an anthology of selves, document the many arms,
devour all with a lens, slowly forgetting myself, break in, this is the
politics of meat, me in the middle, outraged and tremble, hiding them
with shaky hands, throw it down now, suck out the marrow, this isn’t it,
I am sure, but what is after the aftermath, maybe the ice caps are lonely,
they are and I can hear them and the walls are pouring into my shot glass, a
symphony, wow, only one smaller, who is the next, keep cutting the fat,
judging weight, vacuum pack, line me up, who is this—an involuntary
twitching of the leg, maximum confusion, terror, terror, the bulb
has blown, crush it down to synthesise, rip up the carpet,
rip up them all, huddled over the bathtub, docile bodies,
the crackle of expansion, pull it back, puberty
drew my skin into constellations, star maps
to see me through, now the charts
are but traces, now the
lines are dead.

Grace Cohen