title taken from Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem
I walked like a rage into the body of my life, which insisted the end of grief came
in the fulfillment of desire, but desire, like loneliness, is a hunger it will
come back I muzzled grief I desired with a desire beyond desire
I repeated the word until it grew fuzz in my throat, until its great flower
bloomed there, and struck speech from me I walked like a dog into grief’s entryway,
spat the dead rabbit at its feet, with disgusting and pathetic devotion, and it let me in
it let me in because it saw how I wanted, and knew itself
to be little more than the unspoken that comes after want it saw how
I wanted, with a want beyond wanting, and could offer no comfort, so it took
the rabbit, skinned and cooked it, and fed me from its open wrist.
Gabrielle Grace Hogan (she/her) received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been published by TriQuarterly, The Journal, Salamander, and others, and has been supported by the Ragdale Foundation, Tin House Workshop, and the Hambidge Center. She has published two chapbooks, Soft Obliteration (Ghost City Press, 2020) and Love Me with the Fierce Horse of Your Heart (Ursus Americanus Press, 2023). She is a team writer for Autostraddle and an assistant poetry editor for Foglifter. Find more information on her website, gabriellegracehogan.com. For now, she lives in Dallas, Texas.
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