A Snack in the Sunshine, Perry Gasteiger

CW: bodily harm, death

You lay there asleep under the willow tree,

I hear the carrion birds calling

hungry songs into the dawn,

wretched screeches as they beat their wings

and descend upon your body.

I hear flesh tear from bone like

sweet babes from mothers’ wombs —

my stomach rumbles at your carcass

stripped down to ivory nakedness,

baring itself to the rising sun

the bits not worth scavenging rot

under the hot glare of the day.

I crack a bone and suck the marrow,

the smell of putrid matter fills my nostrils

and I breathe deep, licking my fingers

sitting in the shade of the willow tree —

a child screams and I fall asleep

thinking of you in the fragrant heat.

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Perry Gasteiger is a queer, non-binary poet. Their work focuses on the mundane darkness of our everyday world using juxtaposition between the real and the abstract, the beautiful and the deformed, the congruent and the disordered. Perry aims to see the easily unnoticeable in an evocative and empathetic way.