beast  •  June 2023

scraping the sides of a looming maw making
sense of motion making my jaw click yawning
into the maw of a new life mounting pressure
marking tooth by tooth into mornings into marrow
my movement through the minutes is my maw
my open mouth magnanimous stomach i so often
swallow spitfire steel my senses say nothing meld
with my maw becoming the inside becoming the i
will not say something this time the sagging sediment
of speech unspoken of space erased eaten the
brunt of the burden in the belly of the beast the

       swallowed self the maw the mind the meal