Now that I’ve shrunk from this pairing / I’d like to stuff you with pomegranate

Poetry by Cornelia Barber

Cold Yellow Apple

Now that I’ve shrunk from this pairing
I’d like to stuff you with pomegranate
I’d like you to eat my silver
All this to maintain contradiction
Biting into this apple with you
Calling what can’t be called
I want to tell you of these densities
These animal parts
I want to shrine you into being
Performing soft incantations for
Your arrival your departure in which
You fled from which you lifted your
Bulging apparatus over into nothingness
I want to frame these talks in touch
I want to be more than a little life thing
Everything will arrive sometime
Sometimes I sing myself to sleep.

Cornelia Barber works on desire, becoming, dreaming and matter. She’s getting her MA in Performance Studies at NYU where she studies psychoanalysis, political economy, affect, queer and race theories and other excesses. She’s written two poetry chapbooks Unconditional (Dancing Girl Press, 2017) and Pink Metal (Big Lucks, 2019). You can find her work in Dream Pop Press, Luna Luna Magazine, Prelude, Lemonhound, Fanzine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Entropy, The Felt, Berfrois, The Wanderer, Imperial Matters and more.