Moonlight & Famine

by Lena Ziegler
&
Find you murky   inside my skin  rattling loose splinters from my tongue a rot within this ghost breathing through the letters of your face a name that rhymes sweet forgiveness &   I sense a tingle in   your brain a tickle   asking for the cure you’ve been the wild burn of forest the sticky haunting of  a  man  I  asked  only  once  to  fuck  me  rabid  but  in  my  dreams  I  am  just  a  seeping  hole  I  am continuous  darkness  I  am  treacherous  want  oh  your  bones  construct  language  only  when  I’m listening your bones poke holes in skin & I want only to swallow the spittle  of a love so thick it chokes  us  both  to  death  I  want    only  the  chafe  of  bodies  rubbed  raw  on  the  grit  of  tongue  and human dread have you noticed shadows in the dark trench of my thigh the way light never shines in a gulf so deep the way the end of things means winter & ninety  degrees of animal hunger the way a good mouth can wreck a life I asked only once for a man to trouble my insides spew anatomy from his teeth I asked only once for a man only once for him to know the quake of a heart rattled raw from lack oh to birth a howl straight from these lips a dripping screech of moonlight & famine I am the feral scent of my own ruptured throat the quiet savage dying in your sleep but how those bones of yours will blossom    ruby pink     how those bones fragment     oh how they.
&

Lena Ziegler

Lena Ziegler is the author of MASH (The A3 Press) and editor and co-founder of The Hunger. She was a finalist in the Autumn House Press 2018 Fiction contest and the 2017 Goldline Press Non-fiction contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Split Lip Magazine, Dream Pop Press, Yes, Poetry, The Seventh Wave, Gambling the Aisle, Literary Orphans, The Flexible Persona, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University and is pursuing her Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University.

Artist: Juliette Gallas


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