Diamond Forde

cantfindit

DIAMOND FORDE's debut book, Mother Body, was selected by Patricia Smith for the Saturnalia 2019 Poetry Prize and will be forthcoming in Spring 2021. She is a Callaloo and Tin House fellow whose work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Offing,and more. She is the recipient of the 2019 Margaret Walker Memorial Prize, finalist for the 2019 Georgia Poetry Prize, the Pleaides Press Editor Prize, and the 3rd place winner for the Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Source

fat girl Confuses Food & Therapy, Again

after Jennifer Jackson Berry

 

Who hasn’t carved a fork

through a cut of cake and tasted

dollar store crowns, neon streamers,

wind-up toys coruscating on the rug

like confetti, tune of our skittering

shoes, fingers hooked to scoop

jam from the sandwiches, thumbs plump

as blackberries in our wild, wagging

mouths—those honeyed years

before I understood my body’s struggle

against the morning’s golden net.

Now, the patterned progress of neighbors

through the day’s long maw goes grayscale

and the nearby train scrambling the tracks

hums like static. My partner slabs

his tongue inside me, layers each lick

like strips of papier-mâché. I should tell him

there’s no use, but instead pour ink-like

to the fridge for another bite of cake,

feel, finally, like a bird’s nest, its delicate dip

of twig and twine, slip a new gown

of frosting on my tongue, hope what sugars

stays long enough for one of us to taste it.

Published:

2019

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2021

Themes:

Body & Body Image

Food

Literary Devices:

After Poems

A poem where the form, theme, subject, style, or line(s) is inspired by the work another poet.

Alliteration

the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession

Interrupted Clause

a word group (a statement, question, or exclamation) that interrupts the flow of a sentence and is usually set off by commas, dashes, or parentheses

Litany

Initially a prayer or supplication used in formal and religious processions, the litany has been more recently adopted as a poetic form that catalogues a series. This form typically includes repetitious phrases or movements, sometimes mimicking call-and-response.

Sensory Detail

words used to invoke the five senses (vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell)