GRACE MANTLE
DEMON OF
I ripped a splinter from my areola
and watched orb kiss orb
something violent in a sliver
something heated in your shadows
Demonkind again
quilt pattern like placemat
calling quietly your vision
children making drawings of tunnels for ants,
gentle marking of time underground
they say
Demonkind!
They say, exactitude!
They say, Demon!
They say, Demonkind!
They say, sensitivity!
They say, Demon!
I bring a general loathing of you
and your broken ideas
to focus
––––
HELIX’D ME
Crown caught in glory vine two lips, blush lathe— How the seam carried around the
axis of my thigh— On one side of the pond I sell all my eggs away— Not quite good
enough, but I have got blue eyes—
O saying that next week— to be changed to a pleasant surprise, the correlations
between her legs via daily harp poem is a group decision!
on my plate—
with the morning
to be without a lot of time to grow
if you are very good at all—
O speaking very beautifully
O and really being very good with all the babies and then
remembering— how that sounds nice,
the sounds being pleasant—
Elevated hummingbirds travel quickly sometimes remotely through space
though with some nasty personalities She had a tooth gap and every morning
I would place a dime between my two front teeth to hurry the process and
reflect her image
could have been pushed on my plate with the morning to be without— A
little after one and we heard a crash like a necessary context of my
legs last night shuffling and put up folded, in half against your body
and it seemed pleasant and then the human that was hanging put me
back carefully— not folded in half but helixed gently like the glory
vine
––––
Grace Mantle is an artist and writer born in Baltimore city and living in Atlanta, Georgia. They have a degree in sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Their writing has been published in Peach Mag, Leste, and Her Library, Her Walls. Their life and practice is informed by pre-apocalyptic realities, dream encounters, and ASMR eroticism.