Claire Rychlewski

Tertiary Consumers

Sister-lover you are moving toward me slow

like ooze of epoxy resin

Embalmed in our amniotic fluid,

I’m Angel and you’re Buffy

drinking your blood, swimming

with the orcas of your organs

Alone, I chew through days like air

Pecan-scented vapor on my breath

from your e-cigarette

Rosemary leaf on your tongue

from my pussy in the bath

Let’s make a trade

everything I have

My sarcophagal loot

trick Bible

filled with rot

My lunch for yours

We’re Going to the Badlands

Your cough is throaty

our dark passenger

Looking out the window

I’m missing the way men eat

Cupping their meal to their faces

you can forget about missing something

Are you scared of being shot down

without a girl to scream your name?

Don’t tag around with a hell-bent type

unless your body points directly downward

Driving a blue car to dust

I see the future but I can’t read it

Fairy Princess

I shaved your bones

down to their nubs

combed your hair, sanded down

your eyelids

this woman is no longer a danger

to herself or others

Inside the hospital

of your brain

soft lavender cloth

gently glissading the rougher

surfaces in there, bubbling on the ones with that

hard red crust

Drowned in the chrysalis of you

What remains I can’t be sure

Claire Rychlewski is a writer living in Chicago. Her work has appeared in The Portland Review, MoonPark Review and blush lit, among other publications. “Fairy Princess” appears in her chapbook BORN TO ROT, published in 2022 by Bottlecap Press.