Self Portrait as a praying mantis

Self-Portrait, as a praying mantis

By Erin L George

 

I, with long legs cut on temptation

And fingers fine enough to pick lint from peaches

Will wrap my tendrils around you

Curling you into spiny webs and raising tentacles

To your moans. You’ll fall in love,

Telling me I’m your one and only, only

My ears are closed and drunk on your promises.

 

Carnivore prayers on a heart that thumps twice

At my approach. Murky are your protests,

Please! Go quiet into night where full moons watch

My lashes curl around your kisses.

 

Inside is a city. Crowded, noisy protests from the hanged

Remorseful for their own naiveté. Like children

Who take candy from strangers or men with Mommy fetishes -

“Pick me! Pick me!” And the lonely moans of w****s

Who f**k for another score, high not on sloppy kisses

But black dust and cotton candy whispers.

 

Hard is my shell like the city streets that sing to me

When sleep comes far between stinging bites of light

And waning moon crawls back to home. Dorothy

Calling Toto and an aunt who hardly noticed her missing.

 

I, with lofty dreams and sticky webs

Hungry on blood vows. Starving for your whispers

And hands on my own mortality. Prayers of the kind of calm

That comes in meadows built on daydreams,

Butterflies flirting with the sun and dandelion steeds.

Telling you I’m your one and only, only

Tasting love with misery. Clenching teeth.