Evening comes. Derange yourself.
……..A white meat
rises in the sky. A light
……..to salt your aliment.
A lie. What is it to ventriloquize
……..yourself?
A guard against the you
……..you might have been?
What do I mean by testifying
……..morning after morning
on the page?
……..I milk or juice
my nights by day. I colander
……..the dark.
A mise en scène to give the mind
……..permission
to keep on. A toy tableau
……..I crumb and rearrange.

If I’m the weird unholy sum
……..of my decisions,
what is veal? Born a goner,
……..grown as dinner,
skinned and boned
……..for gastronomes.
An offal thought:
……..my paycheck is a function
of the matter being pressed
……..into a tube. At least
my body keeps its bistro
……..open late, charged on coffee,
plumped on bread.
……..Last week I swallowed seawater
and swore I felt an egg
……..between my teeth:
a salty drupe of caviar
……..the world was tipping me.

As far as I’m consumed,
……..they’re all larding it
over me: the spoon,
……..the empty bowel. I wound them
with my etiquette,
……..I flout their orthorexia
with treats. My wolfish teeth
……..could kill a man,
and have. I pour my politesse
……..between his flaps.
Put a dollar in my slot
……..and I will punctually come.
Eructate and I’m erect.
……..I split into a smile
like a spatchcock with a sad
……..collective fantasy inside.
Could you describe
……..how you metabolize
my care? Name the texture
……..of my effort in your tract?
Could you put in words
……..the taste of my devotion?
Could you ever give me any
……..of it back?

Maggie Millner lives and writes in Monterey, California. She is the recipient of fellowships from New York University, the Norman Mailer Writers’ Colony, and the Stadler Center for Poetry, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Prelude Magazine, TYPO, Sonora Review, The Journal, Interrupture, and elsewhere.