Toaster by Annie Diamond


 
 
The human brain weighs 1300 grams,
about the heft of one two-slice toaster.

I love this equivalence, picture
a toaster on shoulders and torso

            and think of a nonexistent Magritte,
            with some title like The Veneration

of the Mind. But how to kiss someone
with a toaster for a brain, how to taste

his mouth, touch his hair, falter in his ears?
He would have to wear button-down shirts.

            We could not take airplanes together;
            he would never make it past the TSA.

I look at the word torso, all tendon
and tall mouth trochee, retold vowel

muscular. At fourteen I wanted to know
word origins but not to learn them. Toast

            Old English, Middle French,
            brainparts brought from Greek.

Toaster oven the superior appliance
but less germane. I wanted to know

but not to learn: I hope I have changed.
I hope I am less graceless. I am starting

            to learn different kinds of grace,
            the different kinds of being good.
 
 
 
Annie Diamond is a Connecticut native living and working in Chicago. Her poems have recently appeared in The Tishman Review, The Laurel Review, and Tar River Poetry, and are forthcoming in Rabbit Catastrophe Review. She has been awarded fellowships by The MacDowell Colony, The Lighthouse Works, Luminarts Cultural Foundation, and Boston University, where she completed her MFA in 2017.