I don’t wear my mother’s body.
There’s no use sneaking around
the house, a gingerbread prefab,
forest-scented with frosting snow.
Punch drunk on fairy tales.
Non-ascetics: you & me—
There are two kinds of romantics.
Hungry poets traveling in packs.
Youths high on starry endorphins.
Both strung out, marauding baskets
& snacks. Preying on predators
that never see it coming, quick blurs
of spindle-spun lingerie & perfume
in verse. We go on being voracious.
Hand-fed fantasia, baby doll
& vermouth. There are two kinds
of people: virgins & wolves.
Hearts full of apple choose
poison or the truth. Ah, the bitch
of one bite. The clock might strike.
I leave a trail of crumbs on the way
out. Never the way in.
TANYA GRAE won the 2016 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Prize, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa, and is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Little Wekiva River (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Ohio Review, Fjords, New South, The Los Angeles Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at Florida State University while pursuing her doctorate. Find out more at: tanyagrae.com
Latest posts by Tanya Grae (see all)
- Mirror, Mirror - April 26, 2017
