I mean I'm here
to eat up all the ocean you thought was yours.
I mean I brought my own quarter of a lemon,
tart and full of seeds. I mean I'm a tart.
I'm a bad seed. I'm a red-handled thing
and if you move your eyes from me
I'll cut the tender place where your fingers meet.
I mean I never met a dish of horseradish I didn't like.
I mean you're a twisted and ugly root
and I'm the pungent, stinging firmness inside.
I mean I look so good in this hat
with a feather
and I'm a feather
and I'm the heaviest featherweight you know.
I mean you can't spell anything I talk about
with that sorry alphabet you have left over from yesterday.
I mean
when I see something dull and uneven,
barnacled and ruined,
I know how to get to its iridescent everything.
I mean I eat them alive.
what I mean is I'll eat you alive,
slipping the blade in sideways, cutting
nothing because the space was always there.
2017
Regular
Contemporary
2022
2023
Humor & Satire
Identity
Joy & Praise
Allusion
an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Metaphor
a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic
Polysyndeton
the repetition of conjunctions frequently and in close proximity in a sentence