trying to keep it quiet I’m cramming in egg shells and
potato peels emptying the fridge rolling out line after
line of flag-print stamps
⠀
oh please keep it from shrieking at the street preacher
to just shut the fuck up or even more horrifying
from singing amen
⠀
over and over and over this honey-tipped pistil inside
my hybiscus mouth invites tongues of lovers which buzz in
unannounced
⠀
why can’t it be
a worker of overnight
wonders a delicate slug shellacking
your lackluster lips with soft blind touches paving the
way through the dark
with iridescent tiffany spit
⠀
squealing machine guttural heart in a tooth-ribbed trap it
plots the sly differences between waxed fruit and you the thin
line between laughter and slaughter
⠀
(when I was thirteen I slid it across the mouth
⠀of my grandparents’ scarecrow for practice attracted
by the no-risk opportunities of those straw-filled bulges so
much better
proportioned than my lipglossed pillow)
⠀
now it drags me around wanting
new things to lick my neighbor’s purebred dog her just-waxed jag the
boy
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀who works next to me a fallen cake in the oven it
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀sticks out in your direction
when I’m not in the mood threatens
to beg on its knees
⠀
to show it who’s boss
I’ll cut it out, gift-wrap it and give it to you: here
⠀
only I know later I’ll find you
⠀⠀ wielding it in your kitchen
taste tester dish scrubber
⠀⠀⠀⠀ mute extender for soup
Michele M Miller holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Honors for her poetry include an Arizona Commission on the Arts fellowship, and designation as runner-up for the National Poetry Series and the Kore Press First Book Prize. Her chapbook The Pocket Museum of Natural History is now available on Amazon and was a finalist in the New Women’s Voices Series from Finishing Line Press. Michele writes and photographs in her heartland, the Sonoran Desert of Tucson, Arizona. You can find her on Instagram @michelemariemiller.