Carnivores

Men have been eating
Her since she was sixteen.
They would have started
Earlier, but she was late.
Depending on how much
Hair is left on one hand,
And how much time she has
Free on the other, she
Watches her body disappear.

She’s hospitalized. When no one
Is watching she steals syringes
She plans to self-medicate with.
She will fill them with carrot juice.
She’s released after ten days.

She’s told reverse it.
Eat them. She chooses
A waiter. She eats him in
And out of every restaurant
In town. He grows weary
And she eats him up.
Eventually she goes
On to another, a poet, whose words
Fill her belly until he joins
The waiter.

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June Coleman Magrab's work has appeared in New York Quarterly, Oxford Magazine, The Sun, Caprice, The Poet’s Touchstone, Stirring, The Other Side of Sorrow, Breath II, etc.     She has been a fellow at The MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, as well as a participant in the Frost Place Poetry Festival 1992-2005.  She was awarded writer’s grant from Vermont Studio Center in 1997.