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OUR BODY IN SEGMENTS Lauren Foley
snake woman—spitting all her teeth out like diamonds, princess-cut and so venom-edged they could split a man open at the seams, stitch his skin back together with feathers. I beg her: tell me how you got to be this way. standing on the riverside, back to god, and herself, and straw shoved deep into mud, sucking the earth until it shudders and collapses, upheaval just the sand beneath her crescent moon nails. mama said: morals don’t make a man, but they practically raise a woman, and I can’t stop staring at her. at her countertops cluttered with orange pill bottles and molted owl wings, at the cross bisecting her bare throat urging me or someone else to slam back the rewards of (mis)behaving, at her melon-slick mouth murmuring all the promises she’s made to man and kept to Earth. maybe I’m just another one of her
