by Kalyana Dey
Taster, No Choice
I did not need to know the flavors
of minerals on a worm’s tongue.
Through the window, the grey green loom
of storm tastes like last night’s mirror.
The heart beats its drum, the stomach growls
its empty message on repeat. They taste
the same, and then an enemy knocks
and I can taste the sound. How boring
that is, a most predictable flavor.
A train goes by, distant, it is late
and quiet, I hear it clearly, I can taste
the sound of it like smooth warm metal.
I taste lost shoes, the ones hanging by laces
over power lines beside the two lane. They taste
oddly sweet. It does not rain. It rains only enough
to moisten the mosquitoes. I taste
the blood on their proboscises. I do not want
to taste all this but that’s life I guess.
It does not help to tell myself
that worms do not have tongues.
It is still not raining, only spitting on the ground.
I taste the way the sky taunts the land.
I do not want to die but I want to leave.
This world is a big mouth and I am its tongue.
Kyla Houbolt writes from Catawba territory, North Carolina in the US. Her first two chapbooks, Dawn’s Fool (Ice Floe Press) and Tuned (CCCP Chapbooks), were published in 2020. Tuned is also available as an ebook. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Had, Barren, Juke Joint, Moist, Trouvaille Review, and elsewhere. Find her work at her linktree: https://linktr.ee/luaz_poet. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet.
Kalyana Dey is a young writer and photographer currently living in Singapore. She had lived on three continents and has an unhealthy obsession with Marvel movies. She can be found on Instagram @kaleidescope.kd