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We Used to Be So Ravenous
By Lisa Marie Basile
at 7 Gregory Lane, tearing at wrapped gifts.
We brought so many forks to the dinner table.
No, not for food — for something else.
Something we could put inside
ourselves, forever.
We ate the bone of my stepfather
and the marrow of heritage, even if
we’d been scrapped together by time,
error and trial and error again.
We drank the blood of family,
red fumbling tongues: never lie, never leave.
Now remember
how a mother and a stepfather look
when they hold you in,
the way we autumned over time,
our birds cages of feather stench.
(We once had violently colored wings
when we flapped against the metal.)
Sometimes my mother
goes back to check
the mail and sniff our last scents.
Lisa Marie Basile is an MFA candidate at The New School. She has been published in several literary journals, including Word Riot, elimae, Willows Wept Review, The Foundling Review, and others. She is the founding editor of Caper Literary Journal and the author of a full-length collection as well as an e-chapbook: A Decent Voodoo (Cervena Barva Press, 2012) and White Spiders (Gold Wake Press, 2010). She currently works with PEN American Center's Prison Writing Program and is a member of the arts organization, The Poetry Brothel, where she performs poetry under the name Luna Liprari.
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