Two Poems by Aimee Lowenstern

Carrion

1.
You are alive and you are meat,
and when you are dead, you will
still be meat,
and you will be dead.

2.
You want to be an angel,
and when you are dead you will
still want to be an angel,
and you will be meat,
and you will be dead.

3.
The meat like your body
like your corpse like a cloud
split open all bleeding with light
where the angels come through,
heavenly bodies in the image
of meat, with too many eyes
and too many wings, white feathers
like dust kicked up around their necks.

They are here so you, too,
can become an angel. They are here
because you are dead.
They kneel over your body
in prayer. They have very
sharp teeth. You do not notice,
because you are dead. They are here
because you are meat. They receive
communion, mouths bloody
with your blood, tearing flesh
from filament, stinking of something
that was once alive.

4.
Baptized in stomach acid,
they hollow your bones
for flight. Thank you
for becoming an angel.
The holiest thing is to be fed.

---

Late August

The colors of summer
are bright and burning.
Light coming from everywhere.
Heat coming from
everywhere. Sky blue blue
BLUE.
Grass green and unblinking.

Kids catch crawdads
by the bluff. Leave wet and wide-eyed
and shivering like fish.
I can see their skeletons as they move;
spine, shoulder blades.
It looks as if they could easily slip
from their skin. They pull up minnows and toss
them across the rocks.
Gleeful in the way they can make death small.

---

Aimee Lowenstern is a twenty two year old poet living in Nevada. She has cerebral palsy and is a big fan of glitter. Her work can be found in several journals, including Soliloquies Anthology and The Gateway Review.