When Hunger

By Sage Ravenwood

Content warning: sexual abuse

Eats away at apathy
Fleshes out your skin suit
          Gurgling stomach melt   Feeding
                    Lies to an empty belly with what’s left
When the unholy trinity of a man who beds
          Your mother before sneaking in your room
                    Offers slaughter as salvation
          Hunger shakes your limbs like
A visiting missionary speaking in tongues
You hold the rabbit you raised
          The one that never bit you even
                    When pellets were scarce
          Your favorite lapin with a mix of sable and
                    Red fur along her ears and underbelly
By its hind legs upside down
Don’t flinch when the billy club
          Cracks across the back of her head
                    Just behind the ears
Let hunger explain away the numb
Stare into the trees beyond
          Mute the sound of the blade ripping
                    Copper Agouti fur from flesh
For a stunned moment wonder did she know
Move in a trance     Blood dripping down fingers   
          As one by one
                    The hutch empties into a carcass mound
          And you wish you had starved
                    to save the many
Days later clutch the salt-tanned hide
          To your face and soften it with tears
                    Listening to a man gloat about how 
          He popped your butcher cherry and
Realize we’re all prey
Hunger eats us alive

---

Chainsaw Vibrato

By Sage Ravenwood

               Sitting cross-legged sharing a
               crabapple tree’s shade,
 
dew soaking
through my jeans.
 
               Jade grass caught beneath
               fingers, waiting for warmth
 
to turn its cloak chartreuse.
Morning’s unfurled awakening.
 
               Grandfather Sun is a disco ball
               dancing between the leaves;
 
I become a leopard of shadows.
Daylight knife blades
 
               through cloud haze and orange-
               bright eyelids lash fusion.
 
You can't bottle nature’s wild.
All too soon a jagged vibrato
 
               thrums through
               the bottom of my feet.
 
The neighborhood chainsaw
lover has begun his day.

---

Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Glass Poetry - Poets Resist. She also has work forthcoming in the Sundress Press anthology The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry.