I name it with an image:
an orchard where the black plums
tilt and shake, shudder
aubades to their boughs, then fall.
I wait below to catch what drops,
unwelt the maim of skin. I siphon
violence from the flesh and tongue
the sweetblood for a name. Tongue
the ulcer in my cheek, taste the sour memory
my stomach. Trace the lineage of this disease.
I’d like to think there’s something solid
in the sign we mark a virus with; that the
garbled printout and the graphs can grant
full bones to the ghost. Give an enemy to lash.
My doctor offers dim fluorescent, the salt flat
of linoleum. A voice reserved for things with fur.
I sit and stall into my chest, the grip of apparition.
Continue the pill regimen, wince
and house their plummet. Wait and see,
stay haunted. My mouth fills with a half-light,
a wreck escaping words. There’s ecstasy
in this undoing—not the definition’s joy but
inundation, overwhelming. A body spirited away.
I can’t stay the gravity against this fruit,
how flesh splits from the stone. Reaching up,
the juice glints violet through my hand, a sigil I can take.
Header photograph © Liz Baronofsky.
CD Eskilson is a queer nonbinary poet, editor, and educator. Their work appears or is forthcoming in the Cortland Review, Redivider, Peach Mag, Yes Poetry, and Moonchild Magazine, among others. CD is Poetry Editor of Exposition Review and a reader for Split Lip Magazine. They live in Los Angeles.