Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Guillotine
The scorpions always arrive
……………at dawn. Gently,
………………………………………their pincers
……touch the cuts
………………………..on my lips. I clutch
………………………………………………….the edges
of the mattress, stare
……………at the mirrored ceiling.
………………………………………My mouth opens,
…………but no sound staggers out.
………………………….The scorpions—
…………………………………………………..dark green, dank—
reach in, pull out
…………….the razor blade
……………………………………….under my tongue…
Two scorpions.
…………..A razor blade.
……………………………………..Slowly, in unison,
……without letting go of the metal,
………………………….they move.
…………………………………………………..A little guillotine
making its way
……………down my body.
……………………………………….I remember
dragging my thumb
………………………….through his beard,
…………………………………………………….coppery & difficult.
The scorpions
…………..pause, tilt
……………………………………..The blade.
A threat, a reminder.
…………………………It’s my task to stop yearning
…………………………………………………..for as long
as it takes them
…………..to carry a blade
………………………………………across my skin.
……..My thoughts swerve
………………………….from monsoon storms
…………………………………………………..to accordions
to pecan groves.
……………The little guillotine
……………………………………..starts moving again.
…….I begin to sense
…………………………the enormity of my body.
……………………………………………………The blade
high in the air.
……………For now.
by Eduardo C. Corral
Copyright © 2020 by Eduardo C. Corral. This poem was originally published in Poetry Daily (2020).
About the Author
Eduardo C. Corral is the son of Mexican immigrants. He’s the author of Guillotine, published by Graywolf Press, and Slow Lightning, which won the 2011 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program at North Carolina State University.
Queer Poem a Day
Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this fourth year of our series is from the second movement of the “Geistinger Sonata,” Piano Sonata No. 2 in C Sharp Minor by Ethel Smyth, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
