Sweetie Apple
Death hissed over my head when, eleven, I got
an infection—MRSA, I think—and boils bobbed
up under my skin like apples in a bucket at a carnival.
I went to the state fair that summer,
an infection—maybe MRSA—bobbing
inside me as Mom drove us all the way down Illinois.
I went to the state fair that summer, and
a man texted me the whole time about himself
inside me as Mom drove us all the way down,
how much he loved blood, how he considered my breasts like apples.
A man texted about himself inside me when I went
to Springfield, where my aunt lived the quiet days of a divorcée;
my sick blood grew inside my body until the pustules were the size of apples.
The body always takes the long way round, you remember things haphazardly.
My aunt lived the quiet days of a divorcée, her children grown,
her pain soft like a warm bath, one of an infant’s first sensations.
The body always takes the long way round, you remember things haphazardly.
The next summer I was spread on a mattress on the floor,
my pain soft like a warm bath, one of an infant’s first sensations.
He’d cum on my leg, over the scars the infection left: dusky purple coins.
I heard you always return to pain, like you do a warm bath.
The body always takes the long way round and suddenly you’re back,
death hissing over your head, only eleven or so.
Apollo Chastain (ze/hir) is a trans, disabled 23-year-old. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Prize and nominee for a Pushcart Prize, Apollo’s creative and academic work has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution and appears or is forthcoming in journals including Poets.org, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Meridian, The Arkansas International, and RHINO, among others. Ze is a first-year MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. Pay hir a visit at apollopoet.wordpress.com, or on Instagram @apollo.chastain.
