Heat

Tell me how
you made my skin
a bruised doorbell.
My mouth a wet lily.
I open. Spill out
a swollen howl. Tell me
where this rabid came from.
When the wolves gnawed
through the picket fence.
When my voice became so
winter starved. Our glass faces
scrape each other pock-marked.
We spit sinks full of needles. Tell me
why you turned me into a wax paper
skeleton. A hill of crumbling
rock salt. Who taught you how
to circus this mind bend,
this somersault heart.
Who told you to come
make a home in the gutter
between my lungs?

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Chelsea Coreen is a poet/feminist/sparkle enthusiast. She has represented the SUNY Oneonta poetry slam team for three consecutive years, and her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Nervous Breakdown, The Legendary, GERM Magazine, and The Orange Room Review, among others. She released her first chapbook Glitter Bomb in March 2014 wants to be a movie star when she grows up.