You teach me to spit you out

I am allowed / back for a time /
you sotto voice / while staring at me/
with your eternal mouth /

just spit me out from the octopus/
grip that sucks on poem veins/
teach your heart/

to skip every trace of me/
like an old vinyl player/
before you know it/

Soon, I will be this edible ovary/
of pain/ nested under your
left breast/ the heaviness of it/

I am but a joke that falls flat/
in a crowd/ the bleeding fruit/
of my tongue/ to rot unopen/

Honey moon dripping over rooftops/
I swallow moonlight spews/
unscripted grief, unwritten ache/

behind open eyelids, nausea/
slumbers/ and every cell swells /
how can I want these things too/

Clara Burghelea is a Romanian-born poet with an MFA in Poetry from Adelphi University. Recipient of the Robert Muroff Poetry Award, her poems and translations appeared in Ambit, Waxwing, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. Her collection The Flavor of The Other was published in 2020 with Dos Madres Press. She is the Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation.