I Take Threats Seriously
this is an awkward position but I'll hold it for you
you smell of questionable excretions and tea tree oil and
the yellow stains on the upholstery spread every time you visit
your fetishes leak into everything and you're a threat to the wildlife
I take threats seriously, my turtle mouth snaps up nettles
I can't feel the sting and I like the feel of limbs dangling between my teeth
I'm not a thief but watch where you put that hand
what I eat is mine
I'll take those wiggling fingers,
nip you right down to the first knuckle
and I won't care if you bleed, won't give back what you lose
Benthic Zone
her husband is gone for the evening
she's alone and it's getting dark and it's raining
the bedsheets sag with damp and the hiss of tires from distant traffic reach her in lazy waves
it's the ocean again, thin and staticky
saltwater fills the room
her skin thins, expands, dissolves
she's losing her bones to jelly, but this time she's no fish
she needs room for what's floating in her, she makes room--
blue light spills in a stream of bioluminescence from the phone on her chest but she ignores its pulsing
sound muffles, slows in her
her mass distorts it
her mass crushes things that don't belong inside her and
tonight she wants only the soft, hungry things swimming through her currents to be uncrushed
she's filled with fangs and nematocysts and
a depth charge: another pulse, another swirl of light
she can't answer--
a dead leviathan is sinking through her,
slipping through the last wavelengths of light slowly enough for
its bones to be colonized, bored into, digested
its flesh flaking away and spiraling around it, above it like a veil of snow
this body will feed many, many mouths, and she wants to be present for it
she has to watch until it settles
this body needs a witness, needs gratitude
for the gifts it gives to her depths
Stacey Gruver is a poet and artist who lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2014, she was a recipient of the Maryland Individual Artists Award. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Eye to the Telescope, Noble / Gas Qtrly, YesPoetry, and The Puritan.