Poetry, Frankie Balzano
I.
Sadie, I follow you
through the gloom of the endless wood
where the waning Moon leers down
like She knows
this night will drain the light from me, too
I cross the dark grove and meet you,
press my lips against the shell of
your ear, whispering
Let me save you, I will
save you from every bad thing.
but you tell me, I am the Bad Things.
Oh, Sadie, I know
I know, look -
look how the lake boils
and overflows
when you
come
near
II.
Sadie tells me, our love is a darkness rising
and I tell her, look at me
Sadie says, nothing can
sate my appetite these days
and I beg her, let me be your everything
drink me, damn me
soon, I was to become
I was to become my choices,
my choices hanging above me
like a black rock waiting
waiting to fall on me
Sadie, how do we come back from this?
Sadie bends me over the altar fire and the flame licks me,
licks me up
ugly angels take me to Tartarus and
I let them
III.
Sadie cannot cure my heartache
but she says she’ll cure my heart:
one part sugar to salt,
a handful of fennel seeds,
scattered citrus zest
to cover the fish stink
of decay
in a sterilized jar like
a glass womb,
she’ll keep me
unspoiled, forever
IV.
Sadie, let me be your everything
here is my bare flesh,
an offering
I’m spread over silk
sheets on the bed
like Prometheus
splayed over the jagged shore,
every tender part of me
ever ripe for you,
my carrion-eater
Sadie, you straddle
my legs, looming
over me
as you unsheath
the dagger and ghost
the tip of it across
my collar bone,
down
my sternum, you stop
midway to my navel and
our eyes meet
Give it to me,
so you do
white burning pain sears through me
like light as my blood
warms the bowl,
hemorrhaging my devotion
V.
Sadie sucks the marrow from my bones
and tastes all the Love I could not speak,
savors the mineral enormity of it as she
trails her fingers through my tangles,
scrying our future like a Roman with my
liver in her teeth,
the copper heft of it promising us, eternity
Frankie Balzano (they/he) is a queer poet and grotesque storyteller weaving weird tales in Olympia, Washington. They are the author of the chapbook Spider Rodeo (Bottlecap Press, 2022). Their work has appeared in Sunday Mornings at the River Press, Angel Rust Magazine, Driftwood Press, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Oyster River Pages, among others. You can find their work on their website at frankiebalzano.com and hang out with them on Instagram @holyfool.jpg