Kinnings

We must have skinned our naked minds.
Our butcher hangs from a sinewy thread
slobbered on by three leaks overhead.
Daily we do the moody grind.
Weekly we tongue a morbid tune
burped by lugubrious walrus mares
lately widowed. Their flanks bared
to those wiggly eyeballs in the moon’s
pate. No telling who’s beneath the cleaver
as daughter and son glaze each other’s
guts. Now the intestine-faced mother
enters gripping the shank of a beaver.
Dentures are growing out of her palms
as if a toothless man asked for alms.

RICHARD PRINS is a New Yorker who sometimes lives in Dar es Salaam. He received his MFA degree from New York University. His work appears or is forthcoming in Los Angeles Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, Redivider and Strange Horizons.