—GOAT HEAD IN THE BACK. HOW’M I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?

 

 

Hunger

 

Mother had a hunger that scared me. Her skeleton key-eyes always snooping, her talons constantly clicking like castanets. 

Her teeth crushed glass, her lips strands of prison, razor wire.

The strays who visited got eaten. There would be a bloody toupee on the sofa, a severed nose or penis bobbing in the toilet.

When the men stopped coming by, she made her way to my room, locked the door, and said, “You were never my favorite, but you wouldn’t believe how famished I am.”