a poem from The Cannibal’s Cookbook
A part of you believes
comme ci comme ça
applies to
you.
It begins kind of
noticeable and kind of
painless like when you peel
the skin away from a sunburn.
It’s nourishing
swallowing slivers of your cheek
to give back to yourself
in the so-so times after
your anxiety breaks.
Eating yourself
is too literal to
think as love
but it’s only
food from
you to
you.
Vanesa Pacheco is a Latina poet. She received her BA from Wheelock College and her MFA in Poetry at Stonecoast’s Creative Writing program. Vanesa’s fascination with languages and translation has inspired her to blend English and Spanish in all creative writing forms with her love for surrealism, horror, and sci-fi. She is also inspired by the idea of dualism and multi-layering in writing, which has led her to experiment with erasure poetry. Vanesa was the poetry editor for the literary journal Stonecoast Review and has been published in Delirious Hem; The Rain, Party, and Disaster Society; Queen Mob’s Teahouse; and Open Letters Monthly. Her first chapbook, Slippery Tongues, is out now through Winged City Chapbooks.
