This Body Needs a Biscuit

By Anna Limontas-Salisbury

This body needs a biscuit
Every now and then

The kind that sits in
Tongue memory
The kind of biscuit
Rolled by a Black woman
Whose hands healed
Peppermint candy unraveling loudly
Retrieved from a black purse
Snap shut by a gold clasp
Hung on the bedpost when not snug in her lap

This body needs a biscuit
Rolled from the hands
Setting “curicome” droplets on a busted knee

This body needs a biscuit
From the mouth that yelled
“Salve on the back of the sink”
Like doctors on TV call STAT

Salve a salvation
For boils and other body mysteries
Oozing to get out

This body needs a biscuit
From the one
Whose mouth hummed praise
Whose hands shaped bread into prayer
Pushed and rolled flour with the same
Pin shaken at you in threat

This body needs a biscuit
Pressed from a thick lipped
White coffee mug with a broken handle

This body needs a biscuit
From the one who used
A butter knife, not a steak knife,
To spread salted butter
Over hot cushions into a mouth
Waiting on communion with
A body that needs a biscuit

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Anna Limontas-Salisbury is a New York City poet, writer, and educator. She’s been a featured poet at Camperdown, a poetry reading series at Halyards, Honey Dipped Productions Girlhood 2020, and Body Love Open Mic Series. Excerpts of her nonfiction essays were performed with COUNTERpult-Reading Series and most recently HTBAF: Honoring Our Ancestors by Open Source Gallery. She’s a graduate of Hunter College and Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.