Erin Slaughter is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Elegy for the Body (Slash Pine Press, 2017) and GIRLFIRE(dancing girl press, 2018). Originally from north Texas, she holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University, and is editor and co-founder of literary journal The Hunger. You can find her writing in Prairie Schooner, Another Chicago Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere. She lives in Nashville.
Blue Hole #4
On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg gave the Pope a drone
and I let a stranger fuck me in a public bathroom.
A blue-green sparkle of breath on the neck has nothing
to do with atoms, or crying. Knocked
spread eagle on the carpet in grief, imagining
how the camera pans out. One long, slow shot
that stretches like a river across the ceiling, or a close-up
of the cheese shards in the carpet.
Tasmanian devils are being plagued
by a deadly genetic cancer and I am answering
my own text messages with a list of reasons
everyone who loves me is wrong or lying.
I am drinking a margarita from a can
in a dark desert hotel room. I am writing secrets on napkins
and leaving them around the house for no one.
Radio says they unclogged an anaconda
from a river drain, diamonds on diamonds shed
like the memory of a summer night, the moon
looking awestruck. Like he had seen so much
and never expected to be seen back.