This is a piece from our online issue, FALL OF MEN, inspired by the New York Review of Books.
CONTENT WARNING FOR FALL OF MEN : Despite the conclusions of the bad men falling in the end, some of these pieces may have sensitive or explicit content. (That said, it might be real cathartic to read a thing where the bad men get thrown into volcanoes or eaten by alligators. Either way, your mental health is really important to us. Take care of yourself!)
BY AMY PARKES
I am keeping
a secret. I swallowed all
my milk teeth
long ago. I
am still biting my tongue
bloody. I am
still turning
to face my predators. Pale
& sleek
& abundant. (Them,
in the corner of my eye, always.)
A human
leaves the most
infectious bite—those mouths
make wounds
within wounds.
I collected every tooth
they left
in my skin.
A hidden part of me festers.
How often a man
is a man
like you. Maybe I shouldn’t
have been a girl
of that age.
Maybe I shouldn’t have
been a girl
alone. Now
am coaxing out all
the teeth
that swim in
my belly. I am spitting back all
the gore & bones.
I am poisonous.
Other strange men have taken me
into their mouths & died.
Amy Parkes attends the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, pursuing an MFA in poetry. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and is currently working on a manuscript that reimagines mental health trauma and recovery in language rooted in Atlantic Canada’s landscape. Amy has other works published in Estuary, Umbel & Panicle, The Cauldron Anthology, and a forthcoming feature in Post Ghost Press' Small Poems for the Masses 2019 series.