Margo Davis
Ecstasy
I wrap thumbtacks in white bread
and swig milk whole. Jawbreaker wrappers
still crinkle all the way down.
I cannonball them in rapid succession
then sooth my burning tongue with crocus petals
and desiccated spider. When someone
discards a box of nails, I say, why not. Why lie
down if one never sleeps. I soak them in olive oil, drink,
bury a few in hot dogs. I ingest the boxful,
then pogo to the hardware for shotgun shells, no gun
intended. I like their peppery taste on
white potatoes those half-baked nights so carefree
in the yard when a wild hare up my arson
heart signals to the spheres, eager to
act with or without. Oh Warlord,
how I want to take this in, ingest every
bloated bit. Pry open my chest.
Poems by Margo Davis have appeared in Ekphrastic Review, Ocotillo Review, The Fourth River, Misfit, Light, Houston Chronicle, and San Antonio Express, among others. Her work has appeared in several anthologies including Enchantment of the Ordinary (Mutabilis Press, 2019), edited by John Gorman; Echoes of the Cordillera: Attitudes and Latitudes Along the Great Divide (Museum of the Big Bend, 2018), edited by Lucy Griffith and Sandi Stromberg; and Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press, 2015), edited by Sandi Stromberg.
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