Pablo Picasso, Nude with Cats, 1901

Nightcrawler

I throw away all my food

then eat it out of the trash

craving empty cabinets

I prefer my needs

buried

I feel an affinity with

the garbage animals

raccoons and rats

insomniacs

roaming the city streets at night

those tiny hands

looking for pink benadryl

and weighted blankets

size is a poor predictor

of aggression

ask me how much I slept last night

Birthday Girl

It’s your birthday

I should kiss you with

cake flavored chapstick on

so that you can taste

without consumption

like subsisting on stolen groceries

a phantom feast with no receipts

emptiness is an impulse

to fill the void

we desire too much

Eat Me

I’ve made it easy

for you

coconut sugar scrub

exfoliating away

my jagged

edges

smoothing sharp bones

into something

edible

sampling luxury

I can trick myself

into being

softer

yes

I feel like I’m almost

a good

person now

Alia McMurray is a Palestinian-American writer and graduate student based in Chicago. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Multimedia Journalism & Mass Communications and French at Augustana College and is currently pursuing her master’s degree in teaching English Language Arts at National Louis University in Chicago. Her poetry chapbook, Bruised, is now available from Bottlecap Press.