Eliana Gray

AS ANGER EATS YOUR TEETH

We’ve been living in the tidemark
Dragging our possessions
through the shells for days

We can’t save the people we love from drowning when it happens on sand

Grit sharp rough life is annoying
Life is a shit show made
out of actual shit

Missed punchlines sitting in the missed connections section on Craigslist

To the woman on the train in the blue dress:
I almost told you how much I hate you when your leg brushed against mine for the
seventh electric time and I thought about pulling out your teeth

To the sand on the beach that rubbed my neck as I wrapped my lips over your drowning face:
we touched each other in ways I’d never imagined, I’m sorry I was distracted

To myself in the lamp in the dark in the morning: I look at you and know you’re already dead. Drowned on the beach in the dry, dry grit. You can choke on anything if you take the time to force it down

Hold your lips so tight closed when I stretch myself over you like a disconnected jaw, force breath past your lips work your throat till you swallow

You can lead a person anywhere and make them do nothing

You can die without water, you can live in the dark

The horses have been let out of the field

 

 

Eliana Gray is a poet from Ōtepoti. They like queer subtext in teen comedies and not much else. They have had words in: SPORT, Mimicry, Minarets, Mayhem and others. Their debut collection, Eager to Break, was published by Girls On Key Press. This year and next year they will be writer in residence at Villa Sarkia, in Finland. You can find them online @foxfoxxfox and sometimes in real life.