Before We're Eaten
       

Before we're eaten ...
the raccoon-witch-cannibal-monk sings to us,
showing rows upon rows of teeth.
The songs are always about the Arapaho girl
whose parents' names are White Crazy and Grief
and how she offers up her last finger as a sacrifice.
Then the cannibal monk takes a bow,
wearing his own gigantic scrotum as a robe.
At the center of the center of the center of things,
he keeps us.
His stomach is a small bedroom
with an old mattress and wooden floor
lined with old newspapers
and coffee cans full of kerosene
for the scorpions that come out to mock.

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Copyright © 2021 Sy Hoahwah All rights reserved
from Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride
University of New Mexico Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission