Back right left belly back halflefthalfbelly
caught in cotton nets. I pull the lightchain out,
wriggling awry in crawlspace under eye
beating from the belly of a whale
I will kiss you alive
rip the wits from Teddy’s bits
(a kiss clings to lips, clings to lungs)
Day drags me by the hair
as the moon drowns itself in milktide.
I grasp a man’s soft slim book, hook
my fingers in his gut, sliced wide with my pen.
(whiches chant
over the ghosts of sentences,
dangling modifiers
like enchanted chicken bones)
Lisa Grove’s poetry has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, A Capella Zoo, Poetry International, and elsewhere. A senior editor for the California Journal of Poetics, she lives in Los Angeles.
Devilfish Review 