Eloisa Amezcua is an Arizona native. Her poetry and translations are published or forthcoming from Poetry Magazine, The Journal, TYPO, and others. She is the author of the chapbooks On Not Screaming (Horse Less Press), Symptoms of Teething, winner of the 2016 Vella Chapbook Prize from Paper Nautilus Press, and Mexicamericana, forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. Her book From the Inside Quietly was just selected by Ada Limón for the inaugural Shelterbelt Poetry Prize, and will be published in the fall. Eloisa is the Founder and Editor of The Shallow Ends: A Journal of Poetry.
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I walk between whitebrush & blackfoot
daisies alone at the desert botanical garden
& know not to touch the devil’s
tongue or saguaro spines but still
I move my hand closer to the teddy bear
cholla until I touch it or it touches me
the needles clinging hollow curve
under the skin and I like it
I used to be a nice girl
euthymic too
but when the only thing
you have left of yourself
_________________is pain
the filter with which
you move through
the world becomes impossibly
tender like fingers swollen
papules of foreign material
lodged in the body
to be unroofed or
left there to dissolve
