IZZIE SMITH
Commended - 2024 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Mirror'
The Worst Man You'll Ever Meet
has just sat down to dinner with his parents.
he is nearly twenty-three.
you used to be thirteen.
he asks for the salt, please, he gets it,
he takes slices of soft white flesh
from the bone - still warm, still fresh
still kicking. soft and pliable.
he does not think about it too much
these days. life goes on, like a knife through ribs.
a hundred miles / a decade away / meanwhile
the worst girl in the world remains
bare as a clean plate, hot as a sunday meal,
still warm. still fresh. too still to kick,
photographic, static, mad bitch in his attic.
she thinks hard about the jaws of him,
knows they were grown to tear but still
knows the mouth is also for talking and laughter,
knows the hungry are human, we're all the same sometimes.
imagine the meat that pities the carving.
imagine rising from the dish, burnt and tough,
raw and poison, to take the blade -
spit, fire, fork, knife, maw, hands.
there is no Worst Girl In The World, only
her desecrated carcass, the cage.
teeth are bones too.