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sage
Mustelid
I’m told fisher cats sound of
screaming children I’m told
kids down the street older than me
old enough to recognize their bodies
as bodies are to be avoided
I have never seen a fisher cat
only heard its cries afar
from the town’s pool cinema arcade
once I told my mother I didn’t believe
fisher cats existed she took broth
from the pot poured it on the floor
like chrism I’m told crazy
is a word for strangers I’m told
this house is a broken mirror
of my mother’s childhood home
tonight I dip bread in oil rendered
from moth wings I’m told
it is a cure for everything
I’m told the wailing outside
is a fisher cat is kids I’m told
my mother is still in bed
Gospel According to Anglerfish
here in the grass with bobcats
prowling around
like the last guardians of peace
or love love
for a boy named Pierre
who loves
more brightly than angel-
fish anglerfish
lure their prey with fleshy lobes
hanging from the mouth
imagine a mouth so cursed
no one can resist
to place a hand on a knee to place
a knee there
of all places imagine New Orleans where
a delta collects soil
rich as a body filled by other bodies
on the radio a boy
sings to a girl who doesn’t exist yet
yet here is a hand
which has known his hand longer
than reincarnation
someday he will exist in the same lifetime
as this prayer
someday his songs will be about
the boy he loves
until such time as apocrypha and cicadas
I will be neither
Sage is a creative writing undergrad and Blue House fellow at Elms College. Their work appears/will appear in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Ellis Review, Sooth Swarm, The Penn Review, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, The Binnacle, and elsewhere. They can be found on Twitter @sagescrittore.