Zombie Girl

 
I’m not hungry anymore.
           Gallbladder for breakfast,
                       a heart for lunch—
   drunk on liquor-soaked livers,
                                             sated with skin, all colors, all delicious,
                                 some tough, some soft,
                                     some inked, tattoos settling in my stomach.

             I’ve never been so full of body,
                                                         and warmth.

I’m done with mirrors and scales and trips
to the bathroom at dinnertime. No more diets. No more doctors.

                          My ribs only show because that’s where flesh
                                                      has fallen like good beef off the bone.

           I had to feed another starving mouth before I could be born,
                       he caught me in the parking garage—
a small price to pay to eat without regret,
                                                          to gorge on dogs and alley-cats and slow children—
I’m not picky.
           If there’s a pulse, that brilliant beat,
                                                            it means the meat is hot on the go.
                                 And I’m fast.
I ran track in high school,
skinny legs carrying my feather light frame.

All I need is for you to trip, to stumble like baby antelopes.
           All I need is one good bite,
                                          one careless limb and then my nails are in your back,
                                                                         your chest, digging for the darkest parts of you,
                                                                      the little overlooked muscles,
                                                           the ones you don’t even know you’re using
                                                when you sleep and run and fuck—they taste the sweetest.

And when I bite off your fingers, pick my teeth with your bones
                                                                                                I’m not looking for approval.
          I know the blood rolling down my chin is sexy.
                                                                                   I don’t care if you’d touch a girl like me.
 

M. Brett Gaffney

M. Brett Gaffney, originally from Houston, Texas, is an MFA student in poetry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and an associate editor of Gingerbread House literary magazine. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Medulla Review, Newfound, Ruminate, Psaltery & Lyre, Stone Highway Review, Slipstream, and Wind.

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