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.