Rough, dry hands pull at our necks, our expanding skirts.
They tug at the flowerbeds below, sweet and thick, unreleased.
Nourishment, a cloud-blanketed sun. We stay in bed like lettuce.
We soak heat like a sponge, till we’re too heavy to float.
Our loneliness is irony, swollen with greedy buds.
Tasting, crunching the earth like carrots and corn, and reaching toward stars.
Dust. Our carcasses are picked at lovingly by birds. Still, we dine.
And each course demands cheers, a tang, a savoring, extinguished.
Jen Knox is the author of After the Gazebo, and her short work can be found in The Adirondack Review, Cleaver Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Crannóg, Room Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post. She lives in San Antonio, where she teaches creative writing and directs a Writers-in-Communities program at Gemini Ink. Find her online at JenKnox.com.
Image: “Lluvia rosita” by Bobbi Le’ Rae Valentin
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