Bloodlust
Stag At Sharkey’s- George Bellows, 1909
I am torn muscle, I am the broken
knuckles, naked as the hovering dark;
A mouth waiting to swallow bloody
spittle, bruised floor, the front row shirtsleeves
sweated through, the bookie’s cackle.
Hunger blisters, hunger shivers, too.
Just like a man. Just like me, the rest
of us: teeth sharpened, waiting
for a kneecap to twist, a body to crumble
like pillars of a rotted temple, weakened
by rain. Weakened by the fist of it.
BY SOPHIA HOLTZ
I am torn muscle, I am the broken
knuckles, naked as the hovering dark;
A mouth waiting to swallow bloody
spittle, bruised floor, the front row shirtsleeves
sweated through, the bookie’s cackle.
Hunger blisters, hunger shivers, too.
Just like a man. Just like me, the rest
of us: teeth sharpened, waiting
for a kneecap to twist, a body to crumble
like pillars of a rotted temple, weakened
by rain. Weakened by the fist of it.
BY SOPHIA HOLTZ
Sophia Holtz grew up in New York and lives in Somerville, MA. She graduated from Hampshire College in 2011, where she first became interested in performing poetry, and has featured throughout the Northeast. She is currently working on expanding her thesis: a collection of poems about nuclear weapons testing, radioactivity, and atomic kitsch.