notdeermag
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.
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.