after Edna St. Vincent Millay

By: Carolyn Supinka

Pressed into my palm, I pluck you from the night. It is after midnight and I pause on my walk home to duck under the fig tree’s dark drape, feeling up the cold branches for ripe flesh. Inky blue swirl, bruise nestled in my hand. Tear drop plop. Testing your skin with my fingernail, I sickle you. I mimic the slice of the moon piercing the sky, and you bleed sugar into the autumn air. Before taking a bite, I drag your suede suit across my lips. I am just a mouth in the dark. My body invisible to myself, the world needs nothing from me but my appetite. I feel serene in my lonesome skin for the first time in months. The street lamp flickers and before it goes out, I open your body with my teeth, and scattered throughout your flesh I see a field of stars.  

Carolyn Supinka is a poet and visual artist whose work has most recently been featured in Little River, Wicked Alice, and Poet Lore. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and her first chapbook, Stray Gods, was a semifinalist in the New Women’s Voices Series at Finishing Line Press. She is co-editor of VIATOR, a journal of arts and literature inspired by spaces and places. She currently lives in Corvallis, Oregon where she is a MFA student at Oregon State University. Her poetry and visual art can be found here: http://cargocollective.com/carolynsupinka