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Emily Kingery: Wolf at the Door

March 4, 2022 by PBQ Leave a Comment

Her neighbor is hungry, shaking 
drawers for a blade. 
 
His gums are tender 
worms in wet spring. She hooks 
 
her fingers into ornaments
to hang on his jaws. 
 
Her grandmother’s wisdom 
was to feed 
 
umbilical things, to nourish
as roots ripped to lace 
 
in her hands. He comes 
where the shriveled heads 
 
of bouquets drowse on the table, 
where no man will come 
 
to the door with an ax. An ax 
is a woman’s fiction, 
 
a lust for bones cracked loose, 
lungs sucking steam 
 
from entrails. An ax would open him 
like a cupboard, like a romance 
 
novel. He would open 
like an unhealed sore 
 
and pool, like his coat 
brought in from the snow. 

Filed Under: Issue 101, Poetry 101 Tagged With: Emily Kingery

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