how to love without forgetting where it came from
Did you look up tonight?
See that thick moon, curved into the sky
notice it will go away if you forget
notice the smell she leaves inside magazines
the shape she makes when pressed against red-linen’d mattress
her bone structure Eastern European lineage her thumb
slung into bent silver her appetite: she forgets
to eat lunch sometimes
notice the dent against her skull when boys pushed her down because she was too homo
I thought I could handle someone else’s trauma, but
I can barely pronounce my own.
notice her heels frozen oceans cracked against feet hair detangled due to boredom and persistence her
hipbone her chin freckles that gather in the summertime and worry the cancer
notice her push press of salt and blood against western earth grow
into thunders
Aimee Herman, a performance poet, hates labels, though occasionally wears one to rip off and count the hairs pulled. Her poetry can be read in Uphook Press’s poetry anthologies: hell strung and crooked and you say. say plus Pregnant Moon Review, Polari Journal, Mad Rush, Cake Train, and/or journal, Sous Les Paves, Polari Journal, InStereo Press and Cliterature Journal. She works as an erotica editor for Oysters & Chocolate, as a curator/host for monthly erotica and GLBT lit readings and can be found writing poems on her body in Brooklyn. Her full-length book of poetry, to go without blinking, will be published by BlazeVOX Books in Spring 2012. Find her here.
