girl dinner

i love to get the wrong kind of hungry.
cold canned beans with a wooden spoon.
a handful of knives & a sugar light bulb.
i have never learned how to eat. i want
it to be something about gender but
i know it has more to do with bodies 
& the werewolf in me. i open the back door.
let all the mice in & we go crawling 
on the foreheads of cardboard boxes together.
they say, "i thought you wanted a wedding?"
i tell them, "i have too much to do."
by which i mean, i have too much to devour.
my favorite times of my life were
the paper plate times. when everything 
was flammable. when i didn't need 
to remember exactly how far i went.
everything was snow & blood. the tongue
always has a gender & so does the stomach.
if i ever get out of this though i promise i'll cook
real people food. i'll be a wife with an apron
& thousands of ground beef recipes 
at the back of my throat. for now though,
i am the cutting board god. i eat the carrot
unpeeled with dirt still dusting wrinkled skin.
scoop hummus from the plastic container.
every little morsel. lick the spoons' head
& shoulders. i think it's ancestral. a hunger
like a lightning bolt through me & all 
the not-girls, mouths open in the dark. the desire 
to be full always escaping us. just another handful 
of wings. just one more lemon taste.
the shadow of an iris tree.