Stevie Edwards 

The Diplomat

His body, a throne
               I bow down to―

He knows this: power
             begins with knowing 

you can beget the loaves
              and the fishes from 

your leftovers, that each miracle
           is yours. He rips

the delicate lace of a silk slip
               that once curtained 

my mother’s slim hips, that
             I’ve hand-washed 

in four apartments, two
               countries, three cities

 with a level of care akin 
             to worship. It’s true 

I let some animal desiccate
               in the skillet and never

prayed for it. I deserve this
                  staggered violence of

digging into the apple skin
               smooth of my belly,

the bruised fruit, the plunged―
               sopped sheets and gasp.

In the morning I will admire
               my starched and ironed lapel, 

the smartly tailored waist,
             the scarf draped expertly

around purpled collarbone,
             the unworried line of 

his brow, the alter I’ve made
           in this image.




A Blessing

We have come to the Chanticleer to graze
               among the graceless stutter
of neon-washed electronica, spastic metronome
               of collegiate hips. I still harbor
the packman remains of a peach-pecan pie.
               I have been thorough in my loving:
Real butter for the crust. I sampled a sliver
               from each skinned globe
and only baked the best. We scoop
               the mess out with our hands and lick
our palms clean. Each life line says
               keep going. Our thick heels pestle
a paste of stray flakes and beer that sticks
               bodies together like they’ve never knotted
the cheap veil of morning around a bedpost
               and scurried home. Remember:
each slice is as good as the first. This is a mercy
               we’ve earned: our mouths, our own.




POEM WITH PEARS IN IT

                       -After Robert Hass

Everything in the college cafeteria
is the fleshy color of canned pears
and so am I because it is winter.

*
Because it is winter and fresh fruit is impossible,
or at least too expensive,
I spoon canned pears into a blue plastic bowl
and guzzle the syrup straight from the can
like nobody raised me with any manners,
that’s what my mother would say,
and she’d be mostly right.

*
My mother would say, and she’d be mostly right,
that I am a beast. Sometimes I see Hannah with her shirt off
because we are roommates and sometimes it happens
and she has a pear tattooed on her side and sometimes
it happens that I am hungry and I’m not supposed to
put my mouth there because we are roommates.
 
*
Because we are roommates
in a time of fresh fruit
we share bites
from the same soft pear
and let the juice stick
to our bald chins
and say it is good.

*
Say it is good. Say it slides
              good on you tongue.
Say soft. Say bites. Say
              the juice sticks good
to your chin. Say it’s a pear.




My First Stab at Living a Double Life

Because we were too proud a family
for the free lunch program
and cheese and deli meat were too expensive
for daily sandwiches, each school night for a decade
I smeared PB&J over cheap wheat bread
and shoved it into a flimsy sandwich bag.
Because I knew real hunger
was when the loaves ran out
and there was almost always a loaf
of frozen bread in the deep freeze to unthaw,
I told the soon-to-be cheerleaders
who lived in subdivisions
with names like storybooks,  
who mocked the constant sameness
and smallness of my lunch offerings,
that this blandness gumming
the roof of my mouth was my favorite,
that I could have their stupid meat
and crackers, their juice boxes
and pudding cups and fullness
if I willed it. For a month each girl
came to school carrying carefully cut
triangles of PB&J and bragged
hers was the best, and I knew
I could turn any nothing into want. 




We Were Trying to Write a Love Story

but were we flailing on the bare, rough
mattress or failing? If to fail is to want
wilderness and achieve only small puddles
of salt—if to salt is what we do to wounds
to make them feel more wound-like,
then we must’ve been filling
our anatomies with stinging,
which was a failure at mercy,
which is a component of loving.
Did I hear him singing a blues
that bent August into a woman’s room
with no windows to cool the viscous night?
It must be possible to bend a woman
into a window. He must have tried
to jump out of me. He must have
tired his jumping muscles.
Could I have ever born him up
into the glad light of spring?
Do I mean born or raised and can you
raise a sad-boned man into anything
like light? If to find blood inside
a store-bought egg is to bear
sadness, if we were scared to eat it,
then aren’t we human, soaked
and salted and saved?




Forgive it All

At Macy’s on State Street, in the year
of the good paying office job, I selected

an armload of spring dresses to try on,
a present to myself for my birthday.

Forgive the salesclerk who told me
not to play dress-up with the merchandise

when I wasn’t going to buy any.
She couldn’t have been speaking to

my well-starched shirt collar and woolen
trousers. There must have been some

darting hustle left in my eyes. Forgive
me. I dropped the half-dozen dresses

on the floor in front of the fitting rooms
and stomped off muttering, I’ll take


my damn money somewhere with
manners. Forgive me for wanting

them so bad I went to the Macy’s
three Subway stops away where

the salesclerk didn’t mind the trash
in my bloodshot eyes and I wept

in the fitting room and bought
the most expensive frock. Forgive

the looming credit card balance
I should’ve paid down from years

with no dresses and tattered shoes.
There was a glad whimsy music

to that dress— the tiered
gingham skirt and crisscross

back—worth the stomping off,
the weeping, the reckless want.




Stevie Edwards currently resides in Ithaca, NY, where she is working toward completing an MFA in creative writing at Cornell University. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Good Grief, is from Write Bloody Publishing. She is the editor-in-chief of MUZZLE Magazine, editor of 4th & Verse Books, assistant editor of EPOCH, and a proud alumna of Chicago's Real Talk Avenue. Her work has appeared in several literary journals, including Rattle, Thieves Jargon, Union Station, Night Train, PANK, Word Riot, and decomP.  




Return to September 2012 Edition