Image: Erin Kelso
if it were years ago
and you could lock your voice
so it would never unspool itself sheer
& strangely mesmerizing
like a spider’s silk & you
the hunger at its patient center
of course you’d want to of course
you’d still become a story
even years ago
the myth is already written
your body’s just a lesson
no one will survive
the hunger that created you
won’t stop will eat you
alive if you can
call it that if you were
ever alive even inside
your body not yet disentangled
from your voice you were always
just a sound in the dark
weren’t you just a dark pit
in the center of sound
just a black-hole mouth
swallowing hello?
hello hello
     

Casey Patrick

Casey Patrick's poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Passages North, The Journal, RHINO, and others. She has been awarded a James Merrill Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center, as well as residencies from Hub City Writers Project and Tofte Lake Center. She lives in Minneapolis and is at work on her first full-length collection.

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