I'm reading the Codex Gigas,
one hundred and sixty pounds of flesh,
black hairy tongue,
penitent Battenti sponges staining the robe with blood,
stalking through Campania.

Crushed insect nests,
a shiver up the jaw from food not had in too long.
Squashing caterpillars,
the insides squirt from their ketchup-packet bodies
in a spray of slime-neon green.

Pheromone cream drips from your *****, I gag it down,
curdled milk-paste.
When pulling the dress down, one never knows
whether you will get a paper cut,
or a gaping jaw of hairy
life.

We all live like pigs, but need to clean up to appear to live
like everyone else appears to live when we visit them.

You rob me of myself; a teacher
walks into a food bank ashamed and finds his student working there.

My life experiences pile up like broken infant bones,
fragile phalanges of famine,
until all I add up to are decades of
Holodormo,
the Killing Hunger.

You hide in the sea,
I lick your left palm.