To Label the Beast

by Natalie Eilbert

Take eat of the adrenal glands, doctor o doctor.
On my island I am the disorder of my island.
I am the child rapist, the plump red nail, the fear
of my immediate becoming. And I am so becoming.

What I need is a dollar, mr doctor, a crisp one
for a chemical treat. When US president fucks
his young assistant in her 90s-wet mouth, we need
certain punchlines: INSERT BILL HERE. Take eat
of the hippocampus giddy with finite power.

I have a womb so planetary I can hoolahoop
in it and make pregnant winds of this heat.
When at twelve a boy calls me a cuntrag

in the swimming pool I wonder which part
is insulting when the female body insults me.

A rag cleans. A cunt cleans. My power is such

that even my nail clippings can sell you
life insurance. I’m not wicked, I’m manicured
so still pay attention to the verb tense, doctor man.

The bourgeois promises steady paperwork
to the first person who dismantles the head
of vague opposition. I know a man like this
who dismantles the head of vague opposition,
his name is noble the nobler with his hand

up my petticoats. Take eat of the daisy pusher,
my certain allowances. Swallow the cannon balls like
thimbles, and do not let any man in.

O this country of mountebanks o swindle o ache.

I read a daily account of your observations
and I eat up your literature to your shoulders.

Take eat of your shoulders. Take eat of repairs.
In the postmodern tale it is always us who are them, slant
and scaled, the homely brute wants the waste of possession.
If you call me a vessel it doesn’t mean I have citizens does it.

Think about Plath and her monsters, her if you cut
the tongue ultimatums, her de rigueur grammar
when speech has a mouth in its mouth has a mouth. I want you

to follow my narrative into a cave: my amnesty fires a ball
through vengeful throats because amnesty
lives in these vengeful throats. It isn’t murder

when it’s my body killing me, when the city
won’t split open when the doctor pockets its checks.
It isn’t hunger if the doctor enters the cave on all fours,
placing his tit in a weary maw like the word
of god sailing these citizens’ fuck prayers.

I’m tired of the description of cities. Take eat of the epoch
governed by the blackmail of unseeing. My blackmail rag.

Oh no, the boat sails off with the boredom of capital.
Even the fainting couch desires a wife and a tax break.

With steady grammar I can hold a bread knife
to any monster’s neck to let out its monsters. Then what.

My life insurance rag. My sexy boyheart rag.
My strangling thigh rags. My idiot island rags:

I’ve a cave to traitor in
with my money sac. My sac my rag my delicate sac.

—
NATALIE EILBERT