amoeba.

waltz on false feet,

pseudopodia!

a magic spell for making substance out of meat.

unicellular gel:

ensorcell with parasitic practice. 

i’m doomed to lose in every timeline

because there’s nothing more fatal than fragility.

leech off from false feet,

pseudopodia!

a magic spell that makes me complete.

i’m something grand.

god complex higher than the sky,

towering hubris always on brand.

i am leaking happiness from my false feet.

pseudopodia!

with this magic spell, crystallize my intestines

or shape them into sleet.

stare into my single-celled emptiness 

and assign meaning to bleak nothingness.

pseudopodia!

a magic spell to—

By Jenna Tobias

Does Ouroboros Mourn?

Self-devouring serpent,

What is it that compels you to chew your own tail?

Time stretches on into infinity; you have all of it cradled in the pit of your stomach.

Is eternity not enough to whet your endless appetite?

The alchemical process for building the perfect homunculus

Is fixed within your ravenous bite.

Poised at the tip of your tail, a mouthful of stars, mud, and blood—

You’re chasing everything and nothing in hungry loops.

In the middle of an anxious spiral, snakes will devour themselves.

When placed on a plate,

Captive at the mercy of knife and fork,

Will you loosen your jaw?

Or should I pour mouthwash on your maw so you may finally release yourself?

When you sit at the table for supper,

Can you still say you’re starving if you’re forever eating?

The cycle of life and death is destined to drip out of human hands.

Like fruit squeezed into juice,

Time is pulpy and bittersweet; we have all of it until we don’t.

Come your next iteration, who will you be?

Maybe we’re all going to eat ourselves at the end.

So right before we begin again,

I want to ask you:

By Jenna Tobias
(previously published in The Vehicle)

Slaughterhouse Softness

is a newly sharpened blade

that slices through sinew

as if it’s an overripe strawberry.

it’s looking after the lamb

even though it’s destined to die

by your own hands. 

when love leaks out in lakes,

softness is the towel that soaks it up.

it’s shrouding the lamb’s eyes with silky silence

and singing sweet songs in lullaby-lilt.

may you know peace beyond the pasture.

because love is hunger,

and hunger will chew through your stomach lining

if not quelled before it’s too late.

it’s looking down the length of an axe

and knowing destiny is to be doomed.

to be loved so strongly it kills—

there is no greater honor than to die cherished.

in this world,

we love most

by hurting.

measure pain in practice 

and prepare it in prayer.

when the lamb’s head

lolls limp in your arms,

and liquid red rolls down its mangled throat,

how much love is harbored in your heart?

By Jenna Tobias

Who is an Ethical Slut?

(a blackout poem from The Ethical Slut by Janet W. Hardy & Dossie Easton)

dream of love and sex and friendship.

such a life is impossible.

settle for less,

always a little lonely.

try social pressures

and decide that such dreams must stay in the realm of fantasy.

being openly loving, intimate, and sexual is not possible.

love quietly, without much fanfare.

so, ethical slut,

if you dream of freedom,

of intimacy hot and profound,

of friends and flirtation and affection,

then you’ve already taken the first step.

By Jenna Tobias

CORAL CITY!!!!

sway in seagrass,

flashing bright and bioluminescent.

freaky fish romance.

here, you are slick and free,

serrated with wild, manic glee.

move with the waves,

succumb to the magnetic push and pull of shifting tides.

tonight and tomorrow are irrelevant in the reef.

brutal and biological, soft and sweet; starved for a beat.

dance in the neon of no regrets.

sink to the seafloor with me.

coral city: destination of dreams.

By Jenna Tobias