maggie woodward /DISTILLERY

Image by Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn.

Distillery

there’s a moon in me.
it’s in the curve of my ribcage.

last night I locked myself up in the skeleton
of your burned-out barn & hollered wild noise
at the stars: come heal me sideways.

you could lace my fingers,
four in the afternoon,

say honey, I’m going
to hurt you & the yellowbelly in me
would follow.

listen:
you can hear my heart quickening
like a she-devil.

I could sip a sparrow’s blood
without smudging my lipstick.

I’m not afraid to say I want love.

thread me a rosary, you red-bellied fox,
you rust-covered pitchfork,

& I will witch
all wild things to my palms.

how star-shaped, my moonshining
of men:

I light a match
to a stick of graphite.

I black out my eyes.
 


Maggie Woodward is an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Mississippi, where she is Senior Editor of the Yalobusha Review, curator of the Trobar Ric Reading Series, and a programmer for the Oxford Film Festival. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from The Atlas Review, Devil’s Lake, Nightjar Review, Witch Craft Mag, and inferior planets, among others. You can find her online at www.maggie-woodward.com.