Poetry

bellum se ipsum alet

There was too much to eat that night,
(too many bodies) my mouth
cut a thousand mirrors,
picking bones from our teeth,
it was a wonder
how in the glut of it all
nobody choked.

A slide of skins, a swarming tide
of vacant eyes
and scales.
Bodies collecting at feet, the rotting
bounty, the mad preacher,
dynamite fishing in silver rivers,
calling God down
upon the stinking offspring.
Poison would not smell sweeter—

A hundred eyes
anthraxing me
from a distance // no distance too wide
for airborne anatomies
behind it all, the men,
cold and quiet with now unnumbered eyes
a unnumbered bodies waiting,
so patiently,
for the first of us
to bite,

Grace Cohen