Grief ate me up, Janis Tan

Grief ate me up
by Janis Tan


Grief ate me up.

And then,
She spat me out.
Part by part.

First,
The eyeballs came rolling.
Blinked.
Blinked again.
Glared.
Uncertain
Of that dim
light,
they wobbled.
Next,
Came the hands,
Writhing.
Then,
The toes,
Curled in disbelief,
                           Still.
The hair,
Thick with dust
And agony,
Came after.

Randomly,
Others followed—
Intestines,
Twisted and knotted.
Ankles,
Swollen with insanity.
Knees,
Who quivered to touch the ground again.
The uterus:
Empty,
but heavy with echoes of
a
 distant
           heartbeat.

Arms,
Empty yet achy
From yearning to hold.

Lips--
Quivering,
and burning to kiss,
to sing,
to speak the name.

Ears,
that strain to hear
the phantom calls
of
“Mama! Mama!”

The spine,
all crooked
and hunched over
With love,
Lost.

The breasts,
Dripping
milk,
One
swollen,
One
deflated,
                      followed… …
Weeping,
dying to nurture.

The kidneys,
The liver,
The innards and all
What-not’s
They came,
Spit from the
Yonder dark,
Emerged,
all
discombobulated.

They huddled,
panting,
heaving,
hollering,
And they waited.

Finally—

out
      it
          came.

The heart:
Scarred.
Beautiful,
with a hole,
that sang
with ghostly
ethereal
echoes of grief,
quivering.
Like a tin soldier
it
soldiered on,
keeping the beat.
And all gathered,
to hear
the song
of death
and
rebirth.


Coming together
again,
after being eaten
by
Grief.
And then spat out.

Put together again.
But the mirror,
It did not
Recognize.

:::

about the poem.
Janis describes this poem, "I ought to subtitle this poem 'After Mark Strand', whose poems I recently revisited again, and laid the seed of this poem. And the inspiration came when I was hiking with my family, feeling all parts of my body alive, and full of ache."

about the poet.
Janis Tan writes on Ferdinand's Gifts. She is still trying to put together the puzzle of her life after her son Ferdinand died, but there is always a missing piece.