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FURTHER READING
Essays by Arielle Greenberg
A (Slightly Qualified) Defense of MFA Programs: Six Benefits of Graduate School
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Honey

 
by Arielle Greenberg

I am three months out and six to go,
stuffing my plastic Superball body with the salt
& twang of crackers die-cut into the shapes of fish.
God forsakes me when I forsake him
but mostly he’s much kinder, as is his duty:
I am radiant, people tell me, and have no hives,
except the swarm of gold bombs biting its way
into my sticky hollow.  And I don’t mean sex.  
I am just a menagerie for bright orange creatures.  
Even my dreams are godless (and full 
of God): I dream I am guided
by an elderly couple in a dim farmhouse
to their morning radio and blackberry tea
and then given the combs which I snap
into my dry mouth where they fill and fill.
Never, upon awaking, have I been so empty
and wanted more a cracker.  Never so
suffused with the weekly, with time
as another god passing through the many perfect
crypts and ambers I house beneath my skin.






Copyright © Arielle Greenberg. Used with permission of the author.
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