Kiss Another Wolf Deep in Silk

Poetry
Written By E. Kristin Anderson

                                      (a golden shovel after Kesha)

I slow my hands for the bees in the house, pray but
not too loud. This is a deep breath for the bones I’m 

cracking to make a dagger. The lavender’s magic is not
in the flower—it’s the swell of the bruise I love. Now 

I wait on the forest floor, in crow feathers, filthy. I guess
at pink never and hold the egg like a death omen, eat it 

in the glow of foxfire, throat open. Yesterday I worked
for hours on the slope of the asphalt, dug in and spat out 

the rain for the sake of wonder, opened the earth and got
the truth of every word I’ve burned in the whispers here. 

And in the sweet, teeth come down, close the red, grab me by
the arm. In this home the silver slicks into veins, running 

slow to the roots—violence is the soft touch of stone in my
rosemary heart, the secrets I swallow just to fill my mouth.

 
E. Kristin Anderson

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College alumna with a B.A. in classical studies, Kristin’s work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including The Texas Review, The Pinch, Cotton Xenomorph, Washington Square Review, and FreezeRay Poetry. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press) and is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press, forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.

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