lipstick & other obsessions.

3 poems by Veronica Silva.

“she gives you linden to / quench the anxiety, chamomile for sleep, but these / remedies rooted in faith won’t cure a symptom of a / symptom. the deepest hunger you will ever feel is / the desire to be happy enough for other people.”

Artwork by Will Martyr.

lipstick & other obsessions

poem composed of lipstick shades

 

 

the therapist says I must be fine

        because I don’t wear a bare pout—   

 

bear with me— it is my obsession

        to strip clementine from rind

 

pluck hair from chin, sebum from

        skin, trim myself primrose

 

& proper— doctor, you should see me

        on a brunch date, in a board meeting,

 

in the grocery line— I am chronically

        overdressed. my kitten heels don’t

 

have time for this. I am dazed— in &

        out of my daisy dress. I’m afraid

 

I have ginger snapped orange popped—

        I feel rotten— wrought copper

 

penny sweating in a palm. I won’t last

        very long in this oxidized crust—

 

would you like me apple crumbled, rust-flaked

clean? can you see me now? can you see?

 

 

 

 

 

 

abecedarian with loss of appetite

 

 

around the time you stop caring about

being alive, you also start avoiding solid food—

 

canned tomato soup & applesauce on

days the spoon can coax the suckle.

 

easier to stop eating altogether once your body 

forgets the need for molar & stomach:

 

gummy white bread turned over & over by the tongue,

halting mechanism of an unwilling jaw, like an

 

infant refusing the breast. it’s not that you don’t want to,

just that you can’t. your grandmother sees your

 

knotted spine curl like a claw & says thinner

like she’s saying prettier. your body tries to

 

metabolize your mother’s prayers, but there is

nothing to nurse the shame of this condition. you

 

only want to say: look mom, i ate my veggies, my

plate is licked clean. she gives you linden to

 

quench the anxiety, chamomile for sleep, but these

remedies rooted in faith won’t cure a symptom of a

 

symptom. the deepest hunger you will ever feel is

the desire to be happy enough for other people.

 

until then, it’s easier just to say: i took all my

vitamins, i finished my plate. but you’re too

 

weak to do it on your own & even a child knows

xrays don’t work on something this empty.

 

you let her spoon feed you: little gelatin capsules of

zinc, st. john’s, valerian root hidden in a carrot purée.

 

 

 

 

 

negative space

 

 

i never regretted leaving this city until i was supine under

the artificial light of a strip mall salon.

natalie, acrylic hair claw

& gold flip flops, goes to work like i’m for the morgue:

 

sterilized tweezers & microscope. the girls talk shellac

manicure in their miami upspeak; syllables stick

 

& taffy-stretch.                       when i left, i kept mine

gum-cement under the desk. now watch this sorry

 

unsister rewet tacky wad between american teeth. my dumb

maw chews & this unhome carves itself

around me. i’m being

                            dramatic again— prosthetic lash & box dye sheen.

 

what a way to prove i could both leave & stay

me. come to realize what this nontongue already knows:

 

         (somewhere downtown, a not-me mourns her own

 

 

transposed effect) i had to come back to notice i ever left.

The Blood Pudding – July 1, 2021

Veronica Silva is a Cuban-American poet who grew up in Miami, and currently lives in Orlando. She is the recipient of a Provost’s Fellowship from the University of Central Florida, where she is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry. Her work has previously appeared in PANK Magazine and The Acentos Review.

Artwork: Martyr utilizes a mixture of his own photography and found imagery to construct complex and organized compositions. Martyr’s scenes, facilitate an exploration of our relationship to our domestic environment. The utopian views depicted in Martyr’s paintings, although formed from found imagery, present a dream-like world far beyond the realms of what exists in reality. You can find more about him here.