Gift of Lace and Animalistic Desire Bella Koschalk

Gift of Lace and Animalistic Desire

By Bella Koschalk

Sorrow

So the post-contact dog doesn’t die from what kills it. So Medusa is my grandfather holding a chess piece to my head, trying to bridge the gap. So the nurse said where was the damage done and I said in the bedroom but I misunderstood the question so I point to my own dipping softness— damage? So I cut the cake and hit baby Jesus’s jugular, and I wonder what kind of violence is really holy. So I see the holes in the lace, so many you’d guess beauty is just about the lack.

Longing

Sex to be: I am a waxen anatomical venus and she (my “lover”) has a stomach of steel.

(not the kind my father would examine for architectural

No, Just the brute she’ll need to keep me wax.)

Sex to be: Mars mistaken for her scalpel. integrity—

strength

I want to be the stone and the clatter of its drop.

I want to be an empty sky full of fake guts.

Happiness

Birds are alive. Birds use my hair for the living. Birds ask for no favors. Birds ask little of me.