Sarah Belli
“The Famous Taxidermy Winged Kitten” art by Viktor Wynd
Why would someone steal you?
I ask, your mouth wide, waiting for a scream to shrivel
the matted fur, discolored like a rotting orange plucked,
left on my counter. I’d put it in my mouth, an orange slice
molding between my cheeks, hoping it will breathe
if I suck hard enough. Breathe through pulp, blowing
a syncopation into your feathers, make you fly;
fly with toothless fear and stapled wings, a mockery of conscious,
no clawing just fur hair-sprayed like my grandma’s
growing hat collection. My grandma’s hats could
make a kitten scream, they make her scream through the rasp
of chemo. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but even in her once
limp blood-clotted body, she wished she could steal
your stolen wings from your stolen body
and sew a stagnant flight into the baldness of her back.
Sarah Belli is a poet from Sarasota, FL. She is currently an MFA candidate at Florida Atlantic University, concentrating in poetry. She finds herself inspired by lucrative entanglements of death, generational gender roles, and the early modern witch hunt. Her poetry has been published in Sucarnoochee Review and The Oakland Review. Sarah is working on a poetry chapbook titled Cemented Bouquet.