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.