Poetry By Savannah Gripshover

Tristan Loper CC



​Princess

Empress of white trash atop your cardboard throne
Post-apocalyptic puppy scavenging for suburbia
We lied and told everyone you were part dalmatian,
Trying to mystify the mutt inside you, the black spots
On your belly worm-wriggling, choking your ribs

We kept you chained to a nothing-house
In our nothing-lawn with nothing in your bowl
Or in your heart / when’s the last time someone 
Played with you, girl? When’s the last time
Someone readied the skin for you to sniff,
Presented their jean-thick knees for the scuffing?

In another universe maybe you’d be our little sister
And we’d keep you tethered to the kitchen table,
Tossing bones for you to swallow all the same;
In another universe you’d be pale and bruised
And hungry, starving, but with the hands to reach
For the food / but always, you’re imprisoned, rot-girl
You are a dead dog in every single universe

I know you were sick when it happened, half-mauled,
Not so much different than you were when we were babies
But were you leaping and licking and yapping so juvenile
And joyful the day daddy led you to the back?
Did the steel smile of his gun glow in a color
Your sad eyes could see? When he raised his arm,
Did you think: here it comes. I’ll catch it this time.
He’ll call me a good dog and the hurt will ease.
Just throw and I’ll catch, let loose the leash –





Milk

In the winters
We muse about deer meat

The black mornings
In the cobweb-clotted basement
Where we line our legs
With moth-bitten thermals;
The mythos leaks from
The brown-toothed mouth
Of dear old dad:

He will take a creature
Frail and holy and he will dissect it
‘Till it’s less than a being,
‘Till it’s only blood and weight /
It’s our birthright: to sodomize sweetness,
Eat in-awe the awful organs

But what about the deer?
The dreams leaking from their pale ears, 
Self-soothing inside their moonkissed milk

Milk and dreams meant for babies, 
Freckled by snow, listening: 
Vibrations of the universe
Shattered by gunshots
Born-of-big-bang – 

I want to sneak out into the night
And freeze to death, sheltered uselessly
By the underbelly of a beautiful thing,
Licked raw by the infinitely pink tongue
Of an animal slaughtered / an angel doomed





Solomon & Tummler

Skinny and ugly, we sip the sap of flat pepsis
Guarding the prize of stale cereal with teeth bared;
Hands, nipped and bloody, curl to feed the itch
The belly goes hungry / so the body grows restless

You’re mud-footed in the backyard, snipping worms
And hating yourself and chasing cats and hating yourself
And watching the road, devoted and terrified, like a Christian /
The truck could be dad’s or a robber’s or a savior’s or 
A stranger’s and no matter the result, you think about
The gun in the bedside table, blacker than hate,
And you think about your little hands on the little trigger:
So easy, easier than breathing, more bullets than teeth in your head

The television prophesizes and you listen, painted by static;
Sleeping on the floor, ladybug corpses squished like stamps atop
The dog-piss crust of the carpet you call a bed / two a.m. and you are
Insane, clinically – but you will still don the ramshackle smile
And you’ll still let the creek water cradle your bruise-bitten ankles
And you’ll still play poised for Christmas pictures, even when the rifle
Leans against the wall where the tree used to waltz

You’ll try to be a good kid, slicing off the skin where the wound used to sit –
The anatomy of your marvelous persona shrinking with every sweetness (but
Festering with every hollow, mangled night colonized by a neglectful mother-moon)

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Savannah Gripshover is a writer and student living in Kentucky. Her work has previously appeared in Miniskirt Magazine.