Three Poems
Erik Fuhrer
my own devouring
your throat a bag of coins toothed up
in a game of roulette that I lapped up
and my teeth are flies biting down
and you are a footbath full of birds
the way we speak
is a symphony of cacti
you slurping the sea
through a metal straw
as I tongue the gaps of sand set loose
the mushroom carrying our cells
has been eaten by a river of birds
purging themselves from the sun
as I beak and wing
into the boiled earth
I rush my own body
like a hand grenade
we are the voices that worm
the air into ears waxed shut with laughter
and I am the blood pressure of the sky
when it is closing
my eyes devouring their own young
star eater
I ring porcelain against my head
to feel the scarecrow whittle out my ear
and spit straight in my face as if
I had finally been brave enough to sink my whole face in
my hair is falling out slowly like crows’ feet
and I can feel the slow retreat of my body nesting
in its split ends reminding me of the way
I used to wish I had a brain tumor
it’s a terrible thing to say I know
but I so desperately wished to escape you
now paper towels are burning in the toaster
and I feel like this must be what heaven feels like
to be so close to disappearing
yes that’s dark but isn’t that what christ did
and he is a galaxy while I am sent to
a quiet room with a white pillow
and a bracelet that says fall risk
see we are all as beautiful as our own first stars
and you ate mine
so bury me in the tear of my mouth
the day you said I didn’t listen
and the next day when my body
and you
and the next day
I don’t have enough tongues to list them all
breakable box
you are a wreck of flowers a gate swung
over your neck like a swan
accusing me of bleeding in the wrong room
and I am a cooked onion a swollen trip
into the arms of a stranger who rides me into town
like a lawnmower—and I am the glass eye
you swallow when you want to see your liver grow
see, I was always your homegrown garden a plant
that you extinguished your cigarettes in
and when I wanted to play you broke me like fingernails
scattered them across the highway
called me your little breakable box
and I shut myself inside like a pearl in the cold hard lips of a clam
Erik Fuhrer is the author of 4 books of poetry, including not human enough for the census (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press). His 5th collection, in which I take myself hostage, is forthcoming at the end of 2020 from Spuyten Duyvil Press. Erik Fuhrer is online at Erik-Fuhrer.com.
