Runner up of the 2024 Contest in Poetry. Read judge V. Penelope Pelizzon’s blurb here.
Batter My Heart
for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
—John Donne
God, if vanilla cake batter were you
forever, I’d breathe your scent. Mend
my cravings after you rise, warm. I’d bend
you in my mouth. Cherry my broken with new
icing. I’d slurp the last of you. I’m overdue
for sweet—I labor prayers to their dead ends.
I taste advice and spit it out. Defend
my need for proof. You say your love is true
but I touch nothing. So, unwind my vain
hunger—or salad me with green. You enemy
my empty and stale my bread, my wine again,
again with hollow. My prison breaks—I
never enthralled you. You wanted me for free—
I chased your ravish, holy. You ghosted me.