Kim Suttell
SHACKLED

If it’s a fever you want, then I’m frenzied.
What are you but an ice ax ear ache,
an ice cleat hike down my throat,
the churned Weddell Sea in my paunch. Hell,
you’re the whole Antarctic. I ahoy you
through blown globs of molten glass
pincered and pounded with thin sparks bounced off
withered in the cold before they can blink.

I want you with the knife violent drive of having
to piss and the diffuse warm pleasure after.
I need you beyond aspirin, beyond rashness.
Before I pass out, before I disappear
like krill in baleen, before I feed this fever
to you, examine me. Tell me it’s hopeless,
say hmmm like you mean it and look away.

Kim Suttell lives in New York City where she doesn’t make a living writing poems, but who does?  She has had work published in Right Hand Pointing, Penny Ante Feud, Geist, The Cortland Review, and other journals. Please visit them at page48.weebly.com.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #5.