ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Dr. Stevie Edwards is an Assistant Professor at Clemson University and Poetry Editor of The South Carolina Review. Stevie's poems have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. They are the author of Quiet Armor (Northwestern University Press, 2023), Sadness Workshop (Button Poetry, 2018), Humanly (Small Doggies Press, 2015), and Good Grief (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). They hold a PhD from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Cornell University. Originally a Michigander, they now live in South Carolina with their husband and a small herd of rescue pitbulls.
September 18, 2024
On Gluttony
I once had a bad love
who served me raviolis
he’d stuffed with a bear’s heart.
I don’t know who killed
the bear but I ate it
and said it was good. What
will you serve me, Love?
I have been known to eat
entire lives for breakfast.
I’m not sorry I was born
with an insatiable palate.
A penchant for barbecue
and chocolate cake and the thick
ankles of an outdoorsy man
covered in the small bites
of mosquitoes. Bring me
your ribs slow cooked
on low, your brains poached
in broth for twenty minutes.
Bring me your offal and thighs,
your tongue boiled and balls fried.
I want to devour you whole.
During a writing residency at Vermont Studio Center, I wrote a series of poems exploring my relationship with the seven deadly sins. When it came to gluttony, I started thinking about how possibly there was something gluttonous to the way I loved, something excessive, all-consuming, and overly indulgent. I thought that cannibalizing my beloved in a poem might be an interesting way of embodying my desire to have all of him, to know and love him completely, from the inside out. For the record, I do not actually want to literally eat my beloved, which I remember a friend at VSC seeming concerned about. I'm a pescatarian and do not endorse eating humans.
Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published weekly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
