I’m no good at licking my elbows, have less luck connecting with strangers. Outside,
across the street there are two stick-like poshes with their elbows stuffed in each other’s mouths, licking with tongue and even a light nibble
of teeth. I’m sick with jealousy but also affronted by such public displays of distasteful interaction. So I go out, in my waiter garb,
and I stipple my feet up to their table, demand them to disconnect. They do but they look at me
with the coldest expression. I instantly regret my existence, start backing into the street like a drunk pigeon. Everybody has
the coldest of faces. My boss is shaking his head, not in anger, but in an inconvenient grief like at a funeral for a relative you didn’t
know well. I’m fired.
When I return home, after my ritualistic sob, I look out my window to all the cold-faced people walking in circles around their places of work,
and clamp my hand into a vice. Once again, I try to lick my own elbow.
I can’t.
I tug on my arm, scream, and yank and yank and yank and my humerus pops from its shoulder socket. It hurts
like hell, but I twist my torso around and I’m almost there. My tongue goes down most my upper arm, but doesn’t quite reach
the elbow still. I can’t unvice my arm now. Not when I’m so close. I stretch out, butterfly like, and reach into the drawer.
With a serrated blade, I cut through my arm. My meat stretches away. The blood leaks warm and wet down my side, but my body hums with a distant form of
acceptance. My other-arm hangs limp from the vice. My body oscillates with anticipation as I finally kiss my elbow,
lick the skin. Salty. Bloody. Sweet. I release my hand from the vice, and it’s been mangled. The knuckles look embedded in the skin like a row of embroidered pearls. I take the hand and I nail it through the palm to the wall, not too far from the window.
A simple, primal tiredness starts to creep in, and I collapse to the ground. I’d pray but I can’t bring my hands together. Not now. Not with my arm so high, high above me.
Not with my knees here on the floor.
gor(g)e(ore)
The gorge | Part of me. p(Pain)art of Me is here so-|
| me(scab.)where. somewhere (Pain) Here but not.|A
of | (picking.) M(Pa)e(i) bu(n)t not some(pai)where|
| an(n.)d (Pain) some(blood)whe(.)re. (Pa-| vengeful
in)| the open maw | M(egre)us(gious.)t be| eye-god’s
of a (Pain) burning hell | (gorge)Gotta(ous) be.|gaze
is closing | Got(. P)ta hope(ain) | is u(pain)pon (.)me
with me | it (Pain) is s(p)o(a)m(i)e(n.)where| like oil
between it |but no(Pain)t here. (picking.) No|all over
|t un(Pain)der (god)this li(.)ght (Pain.)bursting,|body
my flesh sticking|(Good)burning,(god.)|skin popping
against bite-incisors | bubbling (Pa) ou(in)t| all over
(body.) | biting | (My) god-mouth (body.) god,| body
(My)| biting |good(degloved body) god,|burning like
| be there part of m(r)e (eleasing) somewhere|bodies
| else. |burning(b) (u)a(t)l(t)l(e) (r)o(f)v(l)e(i)r(e).(s)
Odin Meadows is a first-generation graduate with a BA in English from Yale University currently living in the midwest with his husband and two dogs, not too far from the rural town where he grew up. His work has appeared in ergot., Outskirts: A Literary Journal, Baubles from Bone, and more.