Undermeyou

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: The Number 12 Looks Just Like You by Emily Perkovich

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The Number 12 Looks Just Like You is an examination of #eating #disorders and #body #dysmorphia, their effects, and the traumas that cause them. In this collection Perkovich focuses on the strains caused by society that have left civilization with unhealthy coping mechanisms and responses to their traumas and how we can navigate and destigmatize them in ourselves and others.

Emily Perkovich is from the Chicago-land area. She is the Editor in Chief of Querencia Press and on the Women in Leadership Advisory Board with Valparaiso University. Her work strives to erase the stigma surrounding trauma victims and their responses. She is a Best of the Net nominee and a SAFTA scholarship recipient. She is previously published with Harness Magazine, Rogue Agent, Coffin Bell Journal, and Awakenings among others. She is the author of the poetry collections Godshots Wanted: Apply Within (Sunday Mornings at the River), The Number 12 Looks Just Like You(Finishing Line Press), & baby, sweetheart, honey (Alien Buddha Press) as well as the novella Swallow. You can find more of her work on IG @undermeyou

PRAISE FOR The Number 12 Looks Just Like You by Emily Perkovich

Emily Perkovich’s ability to present the body, the mind and trauma response in such a visceral way without a sense of gratuitousness, is masterful. In this collection she creates a bone-deep depiction of human instinct and need, exploring the inner reaches of the self and the precipices we hold ourselves against, hands threatening to let go at any moment. Too often even those who suffer fall foul to romanticising pain but The Number 12 Looks Just Like Youseeks only to be honest. Rather than revel in vulnerability, Perkovich’s work is a reminder of all that remains to be achieved if we truly wish to have conversations without judgement, without the fear of what is said once you leave the room. It is a reminder that to lay bare our musculoskeletal truths is both a burden and a freedom, both of which are as heavy as a still beating heart in your hands.

–Kristiana Reed, EIC of Free Verse Revolution, author of Flowers on the Wall

More gut punch than poetry collection, The Number 12 Looks Just Like You is a stirring and evocative read on body dysmorphia and eating disorders. Perkovich does not hold back in her stark imagery, providing the reader with such raw insight that this chapbook feels more like a personal invitation into her mind, rather than simply a work of art. Equal parts disquieting and profound, this collection shows off Perkovich’s strength: creating beautifully crafted prose from every aspect of life.

–Casey Dean, author of Wilkes-Barre Cry Break

In a room “where light can’t find the shape,” this is a place of acknowledgement. A place of teaching that comes from a position of suffering. In The Number 12 Looks Just Like You, Emily Perkovich masterfully draws language into circles and silhouettes around eating disorders and body dysmorphia, generational trauma and domestic violence—“I have always weighed myself. Sometimes in pain and ache. Occasionally in an inundating lust for loss.” Even the rhythm within her poems is an ally to the light, to us—to everyone suffering and everyone who knows someone suffering, because sometimes the light sits on the bridge of the nose, the stray hair, or the cheekbone, leaving them indefinite.

–Nadine Hitchiner, author of Bruises, Birthmarks & Other Calamities (Cathexis Northwest Press, 2021)

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The Gashlycrumb Tinies

It shan't be the last

Eat till I'm sick

Puke till I crash

Blood into bone

Bound to my wrists

Dripping to the fiends

With a clench of my fists

bottled feelings (1/?)

🌸🌻🍁❄️