Poetry Reading: DEVOTED (DEVOURED), by Eli Fultz

Narrated by Val Cole

POEM:

I hate when cannibalism is used as a metaphor for love.
I think love is a form of devotion which does not include devouring. Maybe
hunger and
sometimes bruises or
sunburns
but never devouring.

I wrote in a poem once that I am a liar at the best of times.

I hate when cannibalism is used as a metaphor for love
except maybe I get it.
I wake up
wanting,
wishing,
that she’d cut her fingers on my teeth.
Hoping she’d force me
to gag
on her blood, to drink from her
like a
deranged marionette she controls.
I watch her talk and decide I want to kiss her
until her lips bleed,
a sorry excuse for Ruby Woo,
smearing across her pretty face
until she looks less like my love
and more like my victim.
She would taste like iron and honeysuckle
sweet bitter love blood liquor
and I would be drunk on it.

I want to leave handprint-bruises on her hips
leave my mark in any way I can and hope
she bites my tongue and we bleed—
into each other, not on each other
and there is a difference.
Is it cannibalism?
All I want
is for her to become my lover.