We sit in winery windows, in fluorescent dorm rooms,
in Starbucks lobbies searching for wifi. We pretend that we
take back all we’ve lost; we show our teeth, rolling words
meant to kill around in our mouths, writing texts we
never send. Each day, we bury the faint whisper
that we are prey disguised as predators. Each night,
we watch it claw back to us from the shallow graves
we dig. We wonder about to end and ruin. There is
so much threatening to bleed out. The red of it all
does not scare us anymore. Already, so much
of our own blood has stained our hands. We ebb toward
the incantations of ruthlessness like they are Moses
on the mountain. When the commandments land
at our feet, we forget how to read. There is always
justification for the disobedience to our selves:
mostly that we don’t yet recognize the Body as our own.
Hannah Blaser Gott grew up in rural Illinois before attending college in Iowa and eventually settling in Madison, Wisconsin. She enjoys hiking with her dog, playing board games, and reading (mostly fiction, memoirs, and poetry - though not necessarily in that order). When it comes to writing, Hannah writes mostly creative nonfiction and poetry. Hannah’s work has appeared in Quercus, 3Elements Review, Eastern Iowa Review, and Alternating Current Press. She was also a finalist for the 2020 Midwest Writing Center’s Foster-Stahl Chapbook Contest.
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