Carnivore
Multiple sclerosis is a disease in which the immune system eats away at the exterior covering of nerves.
I’m consuming myself,
my doctor says, and I get
the urge each time I lift
a fork. How it rattles
with anticipation as I aim to
plunge it into the scar
tissue of my chest. No worries.
The heart is not where
the heart should be. Neither
am I. I’m supposed to be
upright and sturdy as a moose.
Better yet, a gazelle. I
used to walk so gracefully,
so elegantly in that animal
me. How my antelope
nose soothed my buck’s
neck before he stotted away,
stomping out my heart
like the last flame before
silence. I’m lonely. This entire
burnt forest has forgotten
my name. I bend to lick
the ash and remember
nothing. Not even the twitch
of my heart once pink and
alive as a nest of hatchlings.
He chewed it off just like
I’m gnawing at the dead
gazelle of me. At night I detect
thumping. Heartbeat or
hoofbeat, I can’t say. It creeps
further away, memory of
a man who once loved me,
hungering for the whole of me.
Oh I used to be more edible
than this. And so mealy.
Notes:
This poem is part of the portfolio “The Chorus These Poets Create: Twenty Years of Letras Latinas.” You can read the rest of the portfolio in the December 2024 issue.
Source: Poetry (December 2024)