I breathe into the body
I gave you, a body
built from fingernail
clippings, pubic hair, stitched
with my blood, snips
of tender skin. The inked coupling
of my name and my lover’s,
rose quartz, scrap
of my torn headband,
two small buttons, a needle
in my fingers. Wake, now,
my black threaded mouth.
Fill his slumber with my garden
basil, dried hydrangea. Make me
the quartz he carries, the rose
petals in the solar plexus.
A shoulder filled with lavender,
two eyelashes. When
he touches you, let him think
of my hip bones, the freckle
on my throat. You are my lips
at his ear, my midnight clawing|
down his back. Take what you will.
Bring him to me.
Amanda Auchter
Amanda Auchter is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and the 2012 Perugia Press Book Award, and The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming at The Huffington Post, CNN, Crab Creek Review, Rhino, Rust + Moth, The Indianapolis Review, The West Review, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day project. She is at work on a third collection of poems, Spellwork. Follow her on Twitter: @ALAuchter.
Artwork: Caryn Drexl, Head Full of Roses
Website: https://www.caryndrexl.com/
Gingerbread House Lit Mag 