My throat is riddled
with holes for rocks to grow in,
little white bits.
You put your
tongue in
and I wonder, do you feel it?
Can you slip between
the filled up, crumbling,
rank red cells?
My throat is cryptic,
dead things hidden in the
moist dark.
I put my
fingers in
so you won’t feel it,
The ache of holes filled
up with sharp small stones.
I found a wasp nest once,
a paper maze of
crumpled gray.
And I put my
fingers in
I split it open,
the graveyard holes spilled
spider corpses and
unformed bees.
I took the first fall
pomegranate,
ripe, red, round and firm.
I stuck a knife in,
and split
the whole thing
till the many seeds
in their many holes
spilled out red and slick.
My tongue, my mouth
the roof of it, the moisture.
I put my fingers in
and it all crumbles out
and I spit it, bloody,
in the pale porcelain of
our sink.
Leanna Moxley spends most of her time wandering in and out of fictional dimensions, often guiding others through these portals in her work as a Powell’s bookseller, and sometimes as a college writing teacher.