Your body is a hungry thing,
she tells me. It’s not the first time,
but it is the first time I listen
while she details how my mouth stretches wide.
It’s eager, always coming back for seconds,
devouring every plump thing it sees.
I’ve always been greedy; told I could turn feral
when I get my teeth notched in a thing—
an idea, the soft side of an almost rotten grape,
her purple nipple— but with her it’s gluttonous.
Tell me how I demand more
than anyone can give.
Tell me I look beautiful binging
on flesh and hold my hair back for me,
watch me coat myself in tangy fruit,
drench myself in the garnish of her,
her who makes me something adjacent to full.
This hollow pit of me turned weighted and sated.
I hunger for that which is to be expelled,
so, tear yourself from my throat
and let me eat.
On a Trip to Moonlite Liquor, I Found Belonging
We never had a place made for us.
Hungry and unbreathing, I waited
for my turn to jump the fence.
At night, the back alley behind the house
became a graveyard for abandoned toys
and bikes. The aim of four children
open to disobedience was the next street
over, Gribble. Even its name felt like blood
in the mouth. We were snickering, pleased
with our escape. Hunched over, our backs
became sickle hooks. Curved blades
soon met straight knives. Their edges sharp
and red. Angry with our trespassing.
This place was theirs.
I don’t remember how the fight started.
All I know is one of us, a girl dripped in blue,
got loud with the wrong people, in the wrong place,
became held up against all this blood.
I told myself it was the yellow streetlight
that made her legion. Her tripling rooted me
to the spittle flying out of her mouth, the gap
between her teeth widening. Eventually, her air
flushed the blood down the street. We won.
Then we saw it. A car at the end of the block,
crawling. Some sort of four-legged beast easing
towards its prey. We statued behind an RV
and the loud girl in the wrong place
put her arm around me. Told me to pray for
God to protect us. But when I closed my eyes
I prayed to the loud girl in the wrong place,
to make all the wrong places ours.
After, when we were sure no harm would find us,
when we returned to the house with empty stomachs
and adrenaline filled veins, I thought that all the streets
and back alleys and jumped fences looked a little more like ours.
A. Benét is a Black, Queer poet who loves literature and has a weakness for coffee and the color of burnt clay. Her work is featured in Crab Apple Literary, Tiny Spoon Magazine, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, and more. You can find her on Twitter @benetthewriter