"Guts" and "I HAVE TAKEN ON THE NAME OF AMMIT".

"Guts"

A pause, indented like a brain groove

you run your fingers down. Make me

shiver, I want to feel the ache

in my teeth before you sink

yours in.

I’ve been waiting to change

for a decade, outgrow

these bones; I’m too young for knees like this,

I’m too big for a body.

How do I show you my voice breaking – how,

I can’t, I’m twenty-two and failing.

I wrap you up in my guts;

I already gave you the pretty stuff,

somewhere back between a game of pool

and a movie with subtitles. You rub my hands

to keep ‘em warm

because even a body as small as mine

can’t pump the blood all the way round.

I don’t want to have to spill my rotten life out

for this to make sense, I don’t want to tell you anything.

Powder my nose with peach fuzz,

hope it bleeds all sexy. A pause,

concave and me in its depth,

the silence boa-constricted around me

‘til I’m satisfied and my eyes pop.

You don’t get it.

"Guts" dives inside, literally and emotionally, and plays with what is said and what is not.

"I HAVE TAKEN ON THE NAME OF AMMIT."

When you say a name like my name you mean DEVOURER, SOUL-EATER

but you wrap it in cartouche

to keep it hidden. I punish in a thousand tongues

AMMIT, AMMIT, AMMIT and you rinse the blood

out of my hair and hold me

while I cry in the tub. You say my name like a name,

like DEVOURER, SOUL-EATER sounds pretty,

not like a word like that can’t be taken back

when it’s been spat out.

I offer it to you with bare-neck

DEVOURER, SOUL-EATER

like a naked glyph whispered into view.

You do not write a name

like a name but like a bent arm, two owls,

a loaf of bread that sound AMMIT, AMMIT, AMMIT

and I appear,

not like a name like AMMIT,

but as hippopotamus, lion,

crocodile, like a DEVOURER, SOUL-EATER.

I have eaten many heavy hearts

that were unworthy like a monster,

like a thing like AMMIT, but you touch gently

like a body that is not mine

like the second owl that means death

like a soul I can’t eat.

“I HAVE TAKEN ON THE NAME OF AMMIT” draws from Ancient Egyptian mythology and culture, exploring power and tenderness. The Ancient Egyptians believed that your “true name” should never be told to another as that would give them total power over you. Ammit, the demonic creature-god of the underworld, ate the hearts of those deemed unworthy, destroying their souls.