All in by Melissa Studdard
by Melissa Studdard
But I’ve tried several doors anyway. Once, my grandmother
found me next to an empty bottle of pills and pumped me
clean herself. Come morning, churches had popped up
inside the problem. Self-harm, preacher said, was yanking
my Christ-self from my body like a tooth. Grandmother’s
face was a fragile piece of China. One more helping
of sorrow, and she would crack beneath the weight. She
taught me how patience didn’t weigh anything. Rubbed
my back all night like I was still six, though I was sixteen
and still afraid to fall asleep. Her two hands limped like
wounded deer across a frozen field. Her two hands holding
all of misery, or life, or hope, or religion. It was hard to tell.
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Melissa Studdard’s most recent book is the poetry collection Dear Selection Committee. Her awards include The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Award, the Tom Howard Award, and more. Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Lambda Literary, The Guardian, the Best American Poetry blog, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. You can find her at melissastuddard.com.
by Melissa Studdard
And my body is a collection of rivers
that think they are bones. I love my blood
the way I love pink cherry soda, the way
I would nibble on my own earlobes
and call it good breeding. According
to Eduardo Galeano, the church says
the body is a sin; science says it’s
a machine, and advertising has tried
to make it into a business, but the body
says, I am a fiesta. That’s why both
my elbows think they are wishbones
and all my knuckles have decided
to be opals, increasingly iridescent
with every change of angle. That’s why
every glass of pinot grigio I drink
is a toast to the diamonds in your and my
and Maya Angelou’s thighs. Big, small,
and all the in-betweens are perfect
to me. Even when what I see in the mirror
makes me want to cry, I remember the glory
of the aqueducts that would deliver
those waters from the vast countryside
of my insecurity out to the glamourous
cities of my cheeks, and suddenly my body
is an event to be marked by festivities,
the best year yet of an award-winning
vineyard, a half-century-long firework
display, a pilgrimage, a parade.
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Melissa Studdard is the author of two poetry collections, I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast and Dear Selection Committee, and the chapbook Like a Bird with a Thousand Wings.Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and has also appeared in periodicals such as POETRY, Kenyon Review, Psychology Today, New Ohio Review, Harvard Review, Missouri Review, SWWIM Daily, and New England Review.Her Awards include The Penn ReviewPoetry Prize, the Tom Howard Prize from Winning Writers, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, and more.
