ANNA GEARY-MEYER
Rosemilk
I. Milk Teeth
Underneath this breath of oyster and chillies
There are milk teeth
There have always been milk teeth
Somewhere I am soft and blush
Soy is a foreign tongue
Who cares about the finger clippings of a father
When I have infinite mother?
She gives me pink milk for my fever
We wait for the hair to grow
My starfish skin feels nothing
I touch it anyways
Please let’s spill the milk on my pajamas
Please let’s fill the bathtub
Please save me from the spiral suck
I am miles long
No one covers my strawberry mark
All they do is dry my shower hair
My new neck
When the hair grows I learn spice and sharp
I learn stop collecting moonrocks
But drones can’t orbit forever
There’s a breast in space with my name on it
I say: take me back to the nice place
You say: get on your knees and dig
Underneath this breath of oyster and chillies
There are milk teeth
There have always been milk teeth
Somewhere I am soft and blush
Soy is a foreign tongue
Who cares about the finger clippings of a father
When I have infinite mother?
She gives me pink milk for my fever
We wait for the hair to grow
My starfish skin feels nothing
I touch it anyways
Please let’s spill the milk on my pajamas
Please let’s fill the bathtub
Please save me from the spiral suck
I am miles long
No one covers my strawberry mark
All they do is dry my shower hair
My new neck
When the hair grows I learn spice and sharp
I learn stop collecting moonrocks
But drones can’t orbit forever
There’s a breast in space with my name on it
I say: take me back to the nice place
You say: get on your knees and dig
II. Powdercunt
There is no nice way to say this:
The cunt was ugly so I covered it in makeup
Vacuumed out the rosemilk
Took to it with razors
All the best landscapes are nothing
I wanted to smell more like nothing
(At the very most
I wanted to smell like rivers)
The man gods grew tall
Asked me what percent scab I was
I lied and told them none
I lied mistaking scab for skin
They told me chew only on flesh
I said: if bread is the stuff of life I am not of life
I am more lemons than bread
Dressed for the fight
Robes of prosciutto and one ham crown
I stood waiting to be sullied
There is no nice way to say this:
The cunt was ugly so I covered it in makeup
Vacuumed out the rosemilk
Took to it with razors
All the best landscapes are nothing
I wanted to smell more like nothing
(At the very most
I wanted to smell like rivers)
The man gods grew tall
Asked me what percent scab I was
I lied and told them none
I lied mistaking scab for skin
They told me chew only on flesh
I said: if bread is the stuff of life I am not of life
I am more lemons than bread
Dressed for the fight
Robes of prosciutto and one ham crown
I stood waiting to be sullied
III. Witch Baby
The skin thought it was pretty
Shaved and ripped and burnt
The skin had no idea about the moon
The moon drowned the skin in tides
The tides spit the skin out in a cave
The cave was made of moonrock
A witch spooned me rosemilk
Sick baby, sick baby
I did not know she was talking to me
In the mountains my hair grew long
Wolves licked up the gack and glitter
Deer crawled in and slept in me
They were warm and dreamt of fur
Galaxies churned inside their bellies
I did not ask them to leave
The skin thought it was pretty
Shaved and ripped and burnt
The skin had no idea about the moon
The moon drowned the skin in tides
The tides spit the skin out in a cave
The cave was made of moonrock
A witch spooned me rosemilk
Sick baby, sick baby
I did not know she was talking to me
In the mountains my hair grew long
Wolves licked up the gack and glitter
Deer crawled in and slept in me
They were warm and dreamt of fur
Galaxies churned inside their bellies
I did not ask them to leave
ANNA GEARY-MEYER lives in Berlin. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in The Pinch, Litro UK, the Olentangy Review, CHEAP POP Lit, The Superstition Review, and Virga Magazine. She was a finalist in the 2017 Bath Flash Fiction Award and in The Reader Berlin's Short Fiction Competition, and hosts the monthly event series Queer Stories.