Type One

Emerald Anastasia

red bull gave me wings | to the emergency room | blood sugar higher |

than twenty-two squared | acetone breath | david’s smooth stones | fling migraine head | 

leaking crimson urine | potent scent | my liver | a pomegranate | diagnosed | a roman day |

saint valentine | noli me tangere | the nurse condescendingly |

“everything happens for a reason” | immutable | a chronic illness | whispered | her name | 

Type One | she always makes me live | in limbo | hypo / hyper | depressed / anxious |

life / death | Type One | an oscillating pendulum | gifts herself | a scarlet cord | 

tingling soles | dandruff oiling brows | O+ bloody needles | a kiss and prick | 

garnet and sapphire deposits | carbuncles glow fortune | to the fingertips |

saint raphael hymns | a beeping psalm | on the glucose meter | rapid-acting insulin | 

contracts in fat torso | long-acting insulin | sleeps in solidified thighs | sick body | a civil war | 

bladder infected | eyes dampened | pancreas self-destructed | blood saccharined |

immune system compromised | abled people infantilize | thin folks antagonize | 

burdening fantasy | nettling | Type One | diabetics | stinging | acidic arteries | the father | 

cephalophoric doctor | indulges | his enhaloed head | spoils | decadent prescriptions |

i clench staring | down | an inferno | in poverty | medical industrial game | a eugenics spine | 

the united states | blows their trumpets | to bury my lamb’s blood | in their mass grave | 

big pharma banquets | disabled life | eli lilly suppers | diabetic suffering | 

while their stolen gems | fund poetry | without universal health care | her name |

Type One | will crucify | me

 


Emerald Rose Anastasia is an emerging chronically ill queer poet originally from Bakersfield, CA. They are pursuing an MFA in poetry at The New School, and their poems appear in Cordite Poetry Reviewand beestung.

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