BY ARIELLE TIPA
eden / earth
we are cheerful, misguided
spinning in circles made of salt
until we are so sick
we can give our pilgrim flesh to science
to expired flora we barely pray to
cantarella
you are so pretty i could fill you with poison
with the playthings i inspect for any trace of violence
we may have
b e w i t c h e d with severed tongues
macrophyte
isn't it remarkable
how many living things i can feed in this venus husk,
this friendly serpent-worship
more aqueous in spring
touch-me-not
here we are creatures lesser and late and dry,
assuming better forms than
those we were given
we can't feel what spring tastes like anymore
and yet here we are, fertile again
Arielle Tipa is a writer who lives near a haunted lake in New York. She is the Founding Editor of Occulum. Her debut chapbook of poetry and prose, daughter - seed, is set to release in Winter 2018 from Empty Set Press.