Matthew Siegel
Matthew Siegel (1984-present) is a poet from New York. His debut collection, Blood Work, is about his struggle with Crohn’s disease. He is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and teaches Literature and Creative Writing at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Source
[My pills doze until I wake them]
My pills doze until I wake them
on the shelf
behind the bathroom mirror,
the one I see myself in
curled over, whimpering,
eyes dark and heavy
like lakes at night.
My pills doze until I shake them
and they dissolve inside me,
make complicated arrangements
with my biology.
They sleep and I take them,
gathered in the cup of my hand.
They tick against my teeth
and I hold my hand over my mouth
as if to shut them up.
Published:
2015
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2020
Themes:
Body & Body Image
Health & Illness
Mental Health
Literary Devices:
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Personification
the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing
Polyptoton
The use of multiple words with the same root in different forms.
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”