Lorelei Bacht

cw: aging, postpartum bodies, lifelong illness, periods, hormone impact on health

Deficient

The delicate, teleological machinery
of hormones: one long column addition –

forget one count or counterpoint,
the chemical construction falls

apart. Why are you always sick?
They ask in disbelief - their compassion

failing to expand to the full length
of my perpetual cold. I am the weak

link, the coal-miner's canary detecting
plagues long before they begin

to torment my brothers, and still
battling long after they are healed.

I am advised to cook up chicken soup,
vitamins, a medieval cornucopia of herbs,

unicorn hoof powder. The cause is lost.
Host of the minutes, my body works not

for me, but for the motes - a breeding ground,
a factory, my lymphocytes perpetually

perplexed before the commonest
of common colds.

*****

Crimson in metric

Inner landscape
of spongious regularity
oozing its crimson in metric
a long, long middle age -
flesh upon flush
of pig iron and fern.
I have already made
more of myself, lessened
the breast, given,
given, yet continue
monthly to devour
whatever left of our
caterpillars on pin
cushions, our wings not blue
but red - the beating fabric
of my kind.

*****

A Body Lost, A Body Found

A body of rainbows,
unseparated from its source -
a universe in a small container.

A body ripe and accustomed
to all seasons: the rich, the poor,
the narrow and the large.

A body fit for one, for two, for others
yet to come, miraculously making more
from half-remembered dreams.

A body of glass beads, of knotted
molasses, of intentions and edibles
laid out on the table.

A body of work acquired through trial
and errors - these errors aged,
now translucent and beautiful.

A body of music, a body muscular,
rebuilt, willing itself to meet
a brand new world in the morning.

A body manifold: folds and
creases, a space to hide jewels
and happen more than once.

A body like a sparkling fish,
the glimmer of the river all around -
a body lost, a body found.

*****

Image Description: A head and shoulders photo of Lorelei Bacht facing the viewer, body turned slightly to their right, and head to the left. Her dark hair is cut short. They stand in front of an off white backdrop. Lorelei is white and wears a black hooded shirt and square framed black prescription glasses.

Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is currently running out of ways to define herself, and would like to reside in a tranquil, quiet form of uncertainty for a while. Her recent work has appeared and/or are forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Abridged, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter: @bachtlorelei