A SEASON IN HELL

Hell, my ardent sisters, be assured,
Is where we’re bound
-Marina Tsvetaeva
trans. by Stephen Edgar

a lion / he wasn’t a lion tho / just a dead man
        no no no no I cannot excite more
than my fish scales falling to
the ground dead teach your children
about the drowning
bath and they will always be
clean that’s what mommy
says to the sexy man the sexy
man of meat that’s what we say as she makes her meat
loaf and we say we’d like another piece
since it plit thru me
eeces and aces I didn’t like my
meal so I didn’t eat it I buried it
thinking it disappeared until mommy and
dadddy found it an murmured me
made me unto meat loaf with my meat
crushed crackers and dried rice
and meat daddy and meat me
we become our meat trinitee
meat meat and holy meat
forever and ever ameat
but I’m not a baby I’m a meat person
on the back of a lion’s bike
and the bike is murder and the man is meat
who is also my father who is also the man
I will fuck who is also a sweaty dead man
who is also a lion and maybe god
all so inherently complicated I eat a sausage
I eat a fake sausage
I eat the plastic fruit and am doomed

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from Blood Bath--published by Cul-de-sac of Blood

Buy it here

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Christine Kanownik hosts FIELD TRIP, a monthly reading series in Detroit, and is the author of two books of poetry: HEAD (Trembling Pillow Press, 2018) and King of Pain (Monk Books, 2016). Blood Bath, her latest chapbook, is out from Philadelphia horror press, Cul-de-Sac of Blood. Her poetry can be found in FENCE, Oscillations, b l u s h lit, and DISCOUNT GUILLOTINE, among others.