Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday.

How to resist gluttonous grief

Undo the little gods within, all tongue-tied intimations
and mysteries once ours to own, the embarrassing

precision of shedding skins, hold nakedness on the tip
of the tongue, carry love’s knife close to the wrist,

tie metaphors to your part-time flaneur ears, except
I want them to pierce the eardrums, scratch at your

eyelids, vacant enough space for me to grow, coming
without asking, a braid of bodies, birds like a row

of pebbles on the sill, every dawn, splintered glow
on your left cheek, later, hollow sun dipping beneath

the horizon. Behold every piece of me rustling with
delight inside your mouth before you place your lips

against god’s broken clavicle, a bloodletting of bursting
hungers, desires clinging dark red to your mouth.

Clara Burghelea has published two poetry collections: The Flavor of the Other (Dos Madres Press 2020) and Praise the Unburied (Chaffinch Press 2021). Her poems and translations have been published in Gulf Coast, Delos, The Los Angeles Review and elsewhere. She is the Review Editor of Ezra, An Online Journal of Translation.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx