A new poem by Freya Turnbull.

Hunger Song – After Kaveh Akbar (Untitled With Hunger And Matcheads)

 

I hold my age in ripped fishnet         hold an empty vessel         oldyoung body

cracks like gunshot      like killa      i was a father at fourteen          walking dead at eighteen

my house has a punk show racket in its bones         i grew up white picket and

thorn bush        lost that       i felt old when i started drinking at ten a.m      how young of me

 

vintage like a flea market        i took my shadow for a walk and it                  howled

see the city. see the lights          blind and milk-eyed         i made space in my ribcage

for     want         i made a grasping vortex, muscular         like a wasted heart

i culled myself back with a paring knife and called it growing up babyfat tendon stripped

down like a weatherboard house, like every weatherboard house

i have wanted

got my sickness from my father         got my sadness from my mother

from the arch of her neck as we buried the childhood dog

 

i tucked myself under my tongue         loose and saccharine         loved the mania

loved a god         black eyeliner swelling my waterline

pinktender like steak         i wanted to do something so bad

that i could be forgiven.

 

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