Carnivore Heart

Do the hungry ever sleep?
I want to believe it.

But my carnivore heart
comes out after dark
waiting to be fed

like a coarse-haired
animal, eyes blood red
with a mouth full of pink quartz.

I’ll eat you rare
I’ll yawp & stare

drag you back–
and under layers
we’ll sweat sweetly

a pretty ache
like a new tooth
coming in

sharp with sin

biting lean winter days
that sneer
at my meat-eating ways.

Out From The Cold

You’ve appeared:
A fox who has chosen
to devour flowers only.
Not out of principle
but to baffle me.

(For I have known
the ache of a swollen belly
fed on a lick of flame.
A few damp clumps
of kindling.

In faith, have swallowed
pounds of snow and seen
my heart’s blood-stained
tracks glow in the hollow.)

But tonight, I will let you in
to feast on conifers and gin
and stroke the bristle of your coat.

That untamed face,
soaked in juniper,
wet with promise,
startling, honest–
uncurls itself from me
like a strand of hair
stuck in candle wax.

Don’t let it burn; it’s bad luck.

Nightclothes

Star-spackled
from a cold sweat–
underthings wet.

I do not regret
turning on
that wiry light,
pulling your
dormant lashes
upright.

Fix your face on me–
two tightened bulbs
fire sparks
behind a matte glass

(as God spits light at us
behind a cobalt blue curtain).

I reach and you shrink
back into refractory sleep.

Count one sheep
until the shearling runs bare.
Count the sheet
for another darling’s hair.

Turn the light off.

Say a prayer.

E. Sparks is a poet and fiction writer from Austin, TX. She studied English Literature at UT, taught English in Barcelona for a spell, as well as Brooklyn. Her poems have been published in The Austin Chronicle, and Luna Luna. Other works can be found on her blog.