Saw
Hunger
was your first word
Born from dust and the whip
of wrists, you divided
and divided
Vibrating
along the line
Sun freckles burned
into your cheeks
With your unbroken
jaw and singular need
Devour the limb, the lamb,
the please
Kiss the hand
that sold you
Myth and monster,
machine of teeth
Rain-colored ghost
whose song is the whir
and was of aftering
Don't Forget Your Credit Cards
Ambulance. Call it. Don’t forget
your license, your credit cards, cut
your own wet gown of bandages, notify
your own damn family when you quit
your little heart, and the red light
slams blue, then blur, then geletal.
Close your own dreamhole,
smyth-sewn and tight. No
natter anymore, no choiring need
or milk-of-morphine cough. The end
continues though you are suited,
hulled, soon-to-be groom
wed to soil, beloved corpse
admiring the underside of grass.
biography
HADARA BAR-NADAV is the author of Lullaby (with Exit Sign), awarded the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize (Saturnalia Books, 2013); The Frame Called Ruin (New Issues, 2012), Runner Up for the Green Rose Prize; and A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), awarded the Margie Book Prize. Her chapbook, Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/Green Tower Press, 2010), was awarded the Midwest Poets Series Award. She is also co-author of the textbook Writing Poems, 8th ed. (Pearson, 2011). Hadara is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.