Pith, Leigh Camacho Rourks
If you want,
you can eat your own heart,
teeth rending that strong muscle,
but it will stick, it will clot.
It is a rough organ that hardens.
A thing like that in your throat—
there will be no room left
for the sound you have been holding.
Leigh Camacho Rourks is a Cuban-American author from South Louisiana and Assistant Professor at Beacon College in Florida. Her collection, Moon Trees and Other Orphans, won the St. Lawrence Book Award. She is also the recipient of the Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award and the Robert Watson Literary Review Prize.