by Toby Grossman
after Ocean Vuong’s Almost Human
It’s been a long time since my body.
Brutal, the mirror crunched
on bone.
Custodians
swept up the crumbs.
Over here I weigh nothing,
less than a memory.
What is more cannibal
than light?
Blasphemy but no one can
lock me up. I have a diagnosis.
It’s called survival,
they told me, too thickly.
But too quickly. I ate.
I made a living
in blood. Ripped the marrow
from my teeth, a prize.
I was a regular savage.
Over here, I am fairy
of the crazy ward.
It was carnage or disappear.
I had to choose.
What a time to be Gone!
the doctors said, pens clicking.
I had guts, the stone whispered,
as I starved, guarding
the beast.
Butcher -I mean human-
wasn’t every lampshade
once made
of skin?
Toby Grossman is a poet exploring the absurd in between games of chess, psychoanalysis, and other attempts at cheating the inevitable. She often writes through the lens of her experiences with mental illness and alienation. Her work has appeared in Kissing Dynamite, Anti-Heroin Chic, the bitchin’ kitsch, and others.
Emerge Literary Journal 