Disco Nap Dream

Ground away towards sky, slide down every emotion. I want to feel something less.  Often, I’m a man. I’m curtailed. Panic. Hot asphalt across my acorn of a face. My favorite hands were always my own. Dip them in honey. I want to call everyone from high school. Their drunk voices fantasize of leaving Midwest slum motels. Eat the meat. Gristle and bone. The Kool-Aid is dank, is blood. Drink from dirty goblets. Hearty. Red lips. Paradise of iron. Songs of fields. Familiar voices in the dark use my body. If only a sound could make me feel loved.

**

Embers in My Mind Steal All Away

Cannot see what’s there, the lights, the fog
until it’s taken from me, a package stolen

on a night I screamed, the thorn to your
ceramic skin, the shark’s tooth necklace

you hold onto, nostalgic and young,
a fault line made of bones, the teeth

are the hardest to find yet we dig around
looking for them like they were diamonds.

What if there is no change, clarity comes
to me like wind, hair in my mouth so that

I can’t speak, to tell you love is a hummingbird
we must feed sugar water constantly

or there’s beautiful death, fast wings
stop, an accident on the trip we take,

two passengers look out different windows
but die, both, all the same.

**

The Dissection

I was cut into pieces
like cattle or a fat
pig that can’t walk.

The men worked all night.
Blood everywhere.
The only noises came

from the saw and flesh
tearing. My head came off first
like a crown. Then limbs

before my meat with the special
names fell into their
red hands. Skin peeled back

like wet clothes.
I saw myself from above.
A moment they waited for, hungry.

Parts of my body roasted or thrown
to the other women, scraps to fight over,
I was never really over.

I lived on in the bellies of men,
the stomachs of ladies, who walked
around the dirt gathering instant gratification,

a fleshy fix, they pulled hairs
from slit mouths, still satisfied,
still unknowing.

***

Sarah Lilius is the author of four chapbooks including the two most recent, GIRL (dancing girl press. 2017), and Thirsty Bones (Blood Pudding Press, 2017). Some of her publication credits include the Denver Quarterly, BlazeVOX, Bluestem, Tinderbox, Hermeneutic Chaos, Stirring, Luna Luna Magazine, Entropy, and Flapperhouse. In 2016, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Arlington, VA with her husband and two sons, and her website is sarahlilius.com.