This Is Not a Myth

ankh spice

 

Everyone knows a good dog

comes when it’s called

and hell, I called her, unaware

of the bargain, the leash tightening

everyone’s choke. Maybe you’ll blame me

for the end of the world

like I do – but last time I said sorry, I tried to tell you

of the falling-pit, no end to the down,

how each 2am’s been a howl cramping the chest

for as long as I remember, terror-dried eyes

slammed open to the dark, and each dawn

a bright hurt as the light scrapes in. How many times

did I mouth to the nothing                                            take me, just make it all

stop                                     stop

And out in the blank, something heard. The stars and moon slid gone

as she slunk in, the quiet weather of her mouth exhaled

the hot sours of an ancient cave

and my tired blood leaped alive to promise, to threat

and my toes dead to the earth for days

found the wet rolling hills of her tongue, and so I walked on in.

In her great belly, sleep

like the unspiral of a saved infant, lap-cradled at last.

In her great belly, the picked bones of gods, of all human grief

names of tears laid to rest.

The prophecy-vault of her ribs has stolen my language of howl, her hunger piqued

by one modern morsel, for the crunch of continents, to lap up

the sorrowful marrow of the sun.

When she devours you, too, I will find you in the dark.

When I tell you I’m sorry

this time it won’t be the truth.

 

 

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Ankh Spice is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa, New Zealand. His work has been internationally published in a wide range of journals and magazines, online and in print, and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize (by Rhythm & Bones Press and Black Bough Poetry). He is a Poetry Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine, and a co-editor at IceFloe Press.