Poetry | June 02, 2021
Poems: Brandi Nicole Martin
Brandi Nicole Martin
No Market for Unfixable Suffering
So I watercolor my skin graft
and thereby beautify its hue,
reframe so I was never “crushed under”
or “burned by car muffler” but instead delicious,
a palatable image, a crumb on the lip
of the reader’s hungry God. The alternative,
more difficult: one day, doctors laced me to a table,
tilted it upward so my legs would avoid
forming clots. This was after the brain bleed,
but I was still a numb puddle, an inkblot,
nothing but regret and a hideous floating head.
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