Osias Beert’s Still life with Cherries (1600-1620)
odi et amo
inextricable
laced like
sweaty limbs
a coiled spring
slotted within
sweet mechanisms
a purple place
hidden rot
like fuzzy fruit
like flushed bile
want your mouth greedy
your neuroses nasty
we’re at home
in our horny gray area
no safe space
hate vibrates
a seductive frequency
your steel skeleton
my magnet cunt
desire’s doppelgänger
antagonym
expired feelings
are a chasm
i cleave to
with guts
your face
a backlit gap
fills me
with nothing
bad vessel
cracked up
i overfloweth
with love
Maura Ford (she/her) is a writer, among other things, living in Chicago. She studied literature at Trinity College Dublin.