NATALIE EILBERT
Before a Future Generation
Of necessity, I have learned to navigate
the junkyard of my own viscera.
The butcher arranges my bones, desires
the hairs on a slabbed kneecap.
The body is another kind of evening
under infrared lights. She segments
my belly: I am so skinny no skin
can hurt me. I am the impression
of wind through the fur of a maimed gazelle.
The butcher she tends to my gashes
to make them bloodless, my neck bone a dressage
she will hold and make proper again.
To be sexless finally, to be meat,
she places a lemon between my lips,
freshens them into a pucker to kiss
like the beak of a parrot fish. A man
from the village peers into the shop
eager to touch me between parchment,
a man who laid me down in faux down
to deliver me my kingdom of filth
and hunger. My butcher she flattens my belly,
to be sliced is to be seen importantly,
bright tower in a failed city. She did this sipping
iced coffee through a straw, a Baltic song
stopped in her head. My thigh’s modern coldness
on the counter. You will come to know this was love.
50 The Paris-American
Of necessity, I have learned to navigate
the junkyard of my own viscera.
The butcher arranges my bones, desires
the hairs on a slabbed kneecap.
The body is another kind of evening
under infrared lights. She segments
my belly: I am so skinny no skin
can hurt me. I am the impression
of wind through the fur of a maimed gazelle.
The butcher she tends to my gashes
to make them bloodless, my neck bone a dressage
she will hold and make proper again.
To be sexless finally, to be meat,
she places a lemon between my lips,
freshens them into a pucker to kiss
like the beak of a parrot fish. A man
from the village peers into the shop
eager to touch me between parchment,
a man who laid me down in faux down
to deliver me my kingdom of filth
and hunger. My butcher she flattens my belly,
to be sliced is to be seen importantly,
bright tower in a failed city. She did this sipping
iced coffee through a straw, a Baltic song
stopped in her head. My thigh’s modern coldness
on the counter. You will come to know this was love.
50 The Paris-American
Natalie Eilbert's work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Colorado Review, Spinning Jenny, Bat City Review, La Petite Zine, Copper Nickel, The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Barn Owl Review, and elsewhere. She was named a finalist in YesYes Book's Inaugural Chapbook Competition for her manuscript, Swan Feast. She is a founding editor of The Atlas Review (www.theatlasreview.com).
