THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW by Maddie Baxter

Maddie Baxter
THE DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU NOW

My left leg is
an eroded coastline.

Squeeze my thigh to feel
the plateau of un-muscle.

Shaving my legs for the first time
at 13

was pressing a blade
to rubber.

If my pain was a keyboard
it’d be the lowest note,

uncaring, deep, monotone,
a whale’s cry

many leagues under
the eroded coastline.

The doctor touches my toes
with chilled prongs

A cold fish in
one of those pedicure shops

where the fish devours
the dead skin off your toes.

When I was born the fish gnawed away
at nerve endings in my left leg.

My leg is snapped telephone pole
no current pulses

through it and my brain
convinces me

I am covered
in tumors.

I am covered in
cafe au lait birthmarks

Stained in coffee
that indicates disease.

Now that I have been touched in fear
by a doctor

who does not even know my name,
I wait

for a bill in my mailbox
totaling $611.21

My mother’s texts
sound like co-star horoscopes.

Sometimes erosion is fixed
with sandbags

Around the crash pad
for waves

I dream about becoming a scarecrow
stuffed with cotton

Meaty, and upright
along the coastline.


Maddie Baxter (she/her) is a poet and copywriter living in Charlotte, North Carolina. She graduated from Wake Forest University with a degree in English and Creative Writing. She’s a fan of poetic constraints, surrealism, and public bathrooms. You can read more of her work in recent issues of The News Station, Unbroken Journal, and Drunk Monkeys.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #36.

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