662. To prepare and Bleach Skeletons.
I cling to your femur like waking up with our hairs tangled
like waking up with our arms and legs around each other,
I have filled your ribs
peninsulas of whiskey and lubricant.
It would be impossible to extract all this,
but still, make a tin box.
Pack your skull, your knuckles, your floating knee caps,
every single twitching digit and
solder on the cover, leave only a round hole for peering out of
eye socket pressed against the top,
for calling out of in your quiet tongueless voice.
Until the box is filled with every single meal you made for me.
Even the ones that burned in in oven
while I distracted sucking on your feet.
Pack your toes in as well.
Seal it over nicely and leave yourself for three months.
More than that. Until the sun will bleach you white.
Any shorter process
will give you a skeleton that is always nasty.
And after I will pull you out. Hang you up. Presently forget.
Poem from the full-length collection, From the Cyclopedia of Recipes, forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2HKSwGKAUc0]
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Q: What is your writing process?Q: Is there an exciting poet (emerging or established) whose work you just discovered this year?
B.C. EDWARDS is the author of the forthcoming novella knucklebone and is the prose and audio editor at Pax Americana. He received his MFA from The New School. He is a regular contributor to BOMBlog, FAQNP and the Brooklyn Review. His most recent work can be found in Red Line Blues, LyreLyre, The Sink Review, Food-i-corp, as well as Hobart, which nominated him for a 2012 Pushcart. His short story “Illfit,” is being adapted into a piece by the Royal Ballet of Flanders. He is also a Literary Death Match champion and has the medal to prove it. His forthcoming short story collection The Aversive Clause won the 2011 Hudson Prize.