notdeermag
Blood and Body, Perry Gasteiger
CW: mentions of blood, pain, & bodily harm
We walked all night
with shoes full of blood,
and at dawn cast them off
to dance barefoot over rocks
with iron-stained faces
bearing our naked soles
and uncalloused toes.
Arches fall, tendons collapsing
under the weight of standing reverent,
bones grind to dust
inside the folds of our skin
and we crawl on knees rubbed raw,
gouge palms on jagged stone
as prostrations shatter
what's left of tattered limbs.
Mangled trunks inch forward like worms
writhing on warm pavement,
rolling onto sun-blistered backs,
praying to an empty sky until
we bite off our tongues,
leaving us choking in fountains
of our own transubstantiation.
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.