By Hannah Matheson

i.

“Maudlin” appears in Late Middle English,

deriving originally (read: “sin”)

from the Latin magdalena.

 

What use are the transitional fossils

of our language? The half-lives

of words in circulation?

 

Well, let’s say Mary represents

a case study in hunger,

hers and theirs, which together

beget blame. Did you dare

 

to want the thing grieved?

Did you drink holy wine and wail

at his tomb? We thwart

 

your desire and we

detest you for it 

 

ii.

I’ve been telling people

you remind me of someone

as a means of conveying

you are unknown to me but

also a kind of homecoming

 

I thought it was adjacent to grace,

to recognize someone in someone

else, but the other day it was said

to me, and I hated it: the accusation

of being iterable. And then I hated

 

that I hated it. How about that,

all of us dying to be original?

 

iii.

Oh god                another

book cover I’ve got my hair grease

all over; another (self)argument

 

about pubes, whether I should or

shouldn’t pay literal money

to have a hot tongue

 

of wax uproot the time

I spent growing older,

capable of nudity.

 

If I hate beauty, its spliced

tape, why do I wallow

when I feel unbeautiful?

 

Possibly we hate Mary because

she was wanted, because when she lost

what she wanted she wanted

 

to cry. If I pretend to exist

outside this economy plotting

aesthetic against desire

 

in order to determine price,

I lie. Like her, weep

to mourn perished principles

 

or consummate a pitiful

performance. My mouth waters

after beauty, because, yes, I still want

 

you to look at me and love me

as is, to long for me specifically

like this. For ex. when I was

 

approaching pubescence

my mother was horrified by my stomach

had never heard of a happy trail

 

but I found it lovely, like

stepping stones in a lazy

river, dough-soft morass

 

of my belly. Would I want

to be more aerodynamic,

less labyrinthine? The truth is

 

I’m partial to this body composed

of pathways, corridors: birth canal,

esophagus, aorta, etcetera.

 

A poet I know once said he’s so tired

of hearing the word “body” 

in poems and I agree,

 

but what stands in for the

physical fact of the body?

Alternate corpora:

 

a butter sculpture,

a bloodbag, a hive

of apologies.

 

iv.

This etymology of appetite

ends in profligate tears,

whorish sadness.

 

v.

Oh       once again

I have wearied the hem of this morning 

 

God     how do you trust

life to be more than a mouth

opening and closing?