Lauren Brazeal teaches writing in the Dallas / Forth Worth metroplex but in her past she's been a homeless gutter punk, a resident of the Amazon jungle, a maid, and a custom aquarium designer. Her second chapbook, Exuviae, is forthcoming from Horse Less Press in 2016 and her individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Smartish Pace, Verse Daily, Barrelhouse Online, and Painted Bride Quarterly among other journals. More about her can be found at http://www.laurenbrazeal.comLady Praying Mantis
See how we can stomach
almost anything.
You call us pious,
but ours is not the God of Lambs.
We lord only
over insolent things: aphids, flies
and crumbling moths singed
by light—they mistake obliteration for heaven,
a human quality. No, not lambs; though we prey
on confusion, the smilers who forget
we're a given—our wide arms offer them
salvation. But you, well-groomed eaters,
who see no difference between lust
and starvation, stay, please,
admire us, never dream us up as flowers.