Organic

by Laura Podolnick, Editor in Chief

i.
A grey dust in the head. Three fingers a
Tripod, right over the bridge
Of the nose. Tick tock tick talk--
But the words lack meaning, they
Spin an assonant spiral, ridged like
A record. Shiny; dark, or

A tornado. Soft, tastes like dirt. I dream
Of a dustbowl death--a dry shampoo to
A conventional drowning. Burial is easy
When the wind is the earth. Breathe deep
And lie down.

ii.
The peculiar romance found in
Soil-eaters. Eyes dead and mad, glitter
Like metals. Ingest the minerals
Straight, no filter. No fibrous green gnashing
Between ivory chiclets: horsey, undignified. Just
Slick black tongue and teeth. Sucking in
A sibilant shoooop: swallow
The night itself by swooping hands fill:
Spilling in--a billion tiny brown bats. Undigestable
So to keep the soil-eaters insatiable. All paws and
Gaping holes. Disbelief and desire: I want iwantiwantiwant i
Want.

iii.
souls and ghosts are both dark
grey. Hexidecimal three three three
three three three but of varying translucence‹the best
of us are light to a see see see, see see see when the
sun is out. Pale but there, like a dust cloud in a bedroom
in the winter by a window. Sweatpants-clad
hot-chocolate drinker waving
a hand through the particles. Friendly somehow.
Tickles on the inside.

iv.
dirt on the skin--an unpleasant grit. Scrub it
off to the point of bleeding, but the afterthought remains. Uncleanliness, a
quagmire. Sit and rot. There is nothing left. Fingers to
temples and eyes pressed shut. Mouth open and
the earth spills out in hues like burnt sienna and
raw umber and black. The dust falls from the eyes
disguised as mascara tracks that pool
in porous hollows of cheekbone.