Gimllum by Janna Grace

I tell myself I like to keep it all to myself
poems and orgasms and shower songs,
back scratches that I let dip a little low
like a gnome
mining in the deepest, darkest cave,
gluttonous, gleaming, bent over like a wild thing
hunched above its kill
twisting entrails between talons
in firelight.

We look so beautiful in light that flickers
away when you just might catch a hard line—
or a reflection in a scuffed-up spoon...
but really, I'm just afraid who will take them,
(or really, take to them),
if I let them out.

The stories we tell ourselves
are the stories that keep.

Janna Grace lives in a half-glass barn and her work has appeared in The Bitchin' Kitsch, Plastik Magazine, and Red Eft Review, among others. She has pieces forthcoming in Otoliths and Horla and she teaches writing at Rutgers University. Janna is the editor of Lamplit Underground and her debut novel will be published through Quill Press in 2019.

Website: JannaLiggan.com

Twitter: Lamplitug