Honey

By Arielle Greenberg

I am three months out and six to go,
stuffing my plastic Superball body with the salt
& twang of crackers die-cut into the shapes of fish.
God forsakes me when I forsake him
but mostly he’s much kinder, as is his duty:
I am radiant, people tell me, and have no hives,
except the swarm of gold bombs biting its way
into my sticky hollow. And I don’t mean sex.
I am just a menagerie for bright orange creatures.
Even my dreams are godless (and full
of God): I dream I am guided
by an elderly couple in a dim farmhouse
to their morning radio and blackberry tea
and then given the combs which I snap
into my dry mouth where they fill and fill.
Never, upon awaking, have I been so empty
and wanted more a cracker. Never so
suffused with the weekly, with time
as another god passing through the many perfect
crypts and ambers I house beneath my skin.

This Poem Features In: