Poetry by Eliza Gilbert

           Peter Corbett CC



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on sword swallowing
 
you ask me about the red and i say it’s blood 
or rust or pomegranate spit crescent moon-ed
beneath my fingernails / guts 
are guts / all the same 
when shredded / so watch me suck 
down my claw-bits with the red
of a scream / -ed out throat / 
i have always admired the blade
swallowers in the big red 
tent / how they guzzled excalibur’s brethren
back into the stone / the stone being
guts / the stomachs
being scabbards / there is no fortress
quite like the windpipe / where i send
my pink-chipped brittle to be born again
as scrape / so the keratin shard may grow up
as a knife in my stomach / i used to kid-scissor 
cardboard into sabers that blushed
against my brother’s cheeks / a blitzkrieg
in the living room / the rules decree 
that if the television is wheezing
out war the children will be playing
soldiers / once we ran 
out of rivalry we turned our daggers
inwards / kept the rapture snug 
in our gullets / the rules decree
all nail-biters will grow up
to be jealous of sword 
swallowers / we’ve spent
our lives eating thorns / they devour the garden
in one red gulp.

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Eliza Gilbert is a freshman at Vassar College who is currently working on her BA in English.