Raspberry Juice

by Maia Schwallie

 

We never want to think about man entering animal
but think about how often we witness animal enter man:

body stuffed between bread
             guzzled down throat
to stomach acid goes the sweet beast who was young

who was birthed into this world
on a bramble of barbed wire
and the pool of his mother’s wails.

I picked raspberries in Michigan once—
by the end of the day, I was pink all over
             sun swirling
             rose glaze on my cheeks
             my shoulders stained and colored Love

like the berries spread over my fingertips and my palms, too,
from the few I crushed to see if they could be paint or blush

             or some kind of pure painless blood.

I was meant to be a forager.
Though I do not know the names of what can sweeten me and
                                              what can steal the breath out my lungs

I do know how to close my lips and
cry for what we refuse to call flesh     body    child     mother.

I leave with my hands and my lips and my stomach

filled with good things—things that knew how to exist

and did not know how to birth    to lose    to weep.

 

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