Group Portrait with Trophy Kill
       

As if cupping a palm leaf, we drank from it,
drank the stars from its belly, slurped the spongy
marrow from its bones. We drank and ate lava
from the curves of its shoulders, holding firm so
we could snap back its head and lick the sweat
from its neck. We cracked the coconuts
of its eyes and cut rivers of sandy milk from them,
rivers which we drank and drank, chewing
on the milk-fattened fish and nipples. It grew
thorns and we ate them with butter. It crouched
like a skunk, and we ate its stink, ate the fear
it secreted. We boiled its blood for the marinade
that we brushed back onto the skewered bits
of its body. We ate it all and ate it all, and when
it said it had no more we made it breed and ate
its offspring and drank the love it lactated
for them. Finally, it released a poison, and we
ate its poison on everything, lapping up the fat the way
you do a golden yolk—on bread, on ham, on pancakes—
on your own finger, when nothing else is left.

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Copyright © 2022 Melissa Studdard All rights reserved
from Dear Selection Committee
JackLeg Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission