Not A Love Poem

Stevie Edwards

Nobody likes showers as hot as me. I’ve learned this from old lovers. A new lover finds thorns where he wants his lips to go, so I buy a new loofah. Scour the past until I’m good meat. In the morning I am a body and at night I am a body. I’ve learned this from failed spells. I want him to press his palms upon my stomach and say, My God, it’s full of stars! I want him to know what to look for.

Stevie Edwards is Editor-in-Chief at Muzzle Magazine and Senior Editor in Book Development at YesYes Books. Her first book, GOOD GRIEF (Write Bloody 2012), received the Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze in Poetry and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award. Her second book, HUMANLY, was released in 2015 by Small Doggies Press. She has an MFA in poetry from Cornell University, and will be starting a PhD in the English Department at the University of North Texas next fall. She currently resides in Ann Arbor, MI, and grew up in Lansing, MI. Her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, The Offing, Salt Hill, Baltimore Review, The Journal, Rattle, Verse Daily, PANK, and elsewhere.