Control Feast by Elizabeth Metzger

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 17, 2017   Control Feast   Elizabeth Metzger

Either you've died, or you arrive beside me at a funeral   patchily reaching out from your zero gravity chair   to grab the relative achievement of my stomach.   There is no cute life in me but I have eaten a great meal   alone successfully, greater than I have ever kept down before,   full of iron and clotted cream. I cannot feel everything about you   anymore the way I used to— the stomach overfills itself so fast   it eats the hunger and the mouth. I grow enamored of you as an egg   you shake in my direction then love you evenly, without belief.            Copyright © 2017 Elizabeth Metzger. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "As I was losing my dearest friend the poet Max Ritvo to cancer, I was simultaneously trying to get pregnant. The longing both to keep Max close and to have a child made me more aware, grateful, and sometimes resentful of my body's 'healthy' but involuntary functions—my physical and emotional metabolism. In 'Control Feast' my dying friend converts a moment of emptiness into the blessed fullness of wanting a baby and love for the profound friendship we would soon lose." —Elizabeth Metzger   Elizabeth Metzger is the author of The Spirit Papers (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). She is the poetry editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal and lives in Los Angeles, California.     Poetry by Metzger   The Spirit Papers (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017)  "Cachexia" by Max Ritvo "How Can It Be I Am No Longer I" by Lucie Brock-Broido "The Soul selects her own Society (303)" by Emily Dickinson Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. If you enjoy Poem-a-Day, please consider making a donation to help make it possible. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038