LUPERCAL

  They suckle at me

Though I long to stay

Near the chunks of flesh.

My pack flay with teeth,

Tongues.

The male, with tongue of fire

Nips at bellies and has first taste.

A waste

I think when his mate did the slaying

While he slunk in the shadows, feigned fatigue.

  My boys are strange.

Furless save for their sweet heads.

They yowl at night like wounded prey

But I am soft and yielding

They take comfort in my thick pelt

Small cries like whispers in my back,

Like the hunters knife.

I will absorb

What they cannot stand.

– ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE QUERENCIA PRESS WINTER EDITION 2022

TAKE A MAN

  Take a man

From downtown alleys where horses clip by

And muggy alcoves by the cut

Feel the smoothness of the palms in your hands

And take him to work.

  Take a man to bed

And he will say things between the sheets

He cannot say in the cold day

When he becomes a ringleader again

Feel the softness of the belly bared to you,

And take him to rest.

  Take a man to the taverns

Where the sun shines on the lake

Get him drunk, tell him stories

About camps and netting and surrounding

Loneliness growing with each passing tiny set of feet

With fool’s gold and curious trickling mystique

And take him to memory lane.

  And he will breathe brick dust in his lungs

And feel canal water in his veins

And he may drink to his oblivion

Or stumble home with a wife

As they choose

Without any particular forethought.

They will take a man.

– ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LUMPEN JOURNAL ISSUE #6, 2020

CHILDCRIES

Childcries

Child hangs limbly in the light, swollen leaning belly

Woman says no, fights back swell and fangs

Child cries weep off the bread

Honeyed crust drying, leaking sticky fingers

Childsick

Child howls on the tiles

Crawls at the wood

Jawing froth and broken sugar

Woman looks for the trees

Childsleeps

Woman holds batwing skin

Stretched taut drums and quiet

Sweatsweet bread

Pieces of pharynx

– FROM ‘TEATH’ BY LAURA JANE ROUND, PUBLISHED BY ALIEN BUDDHA PRESS, 2022