Snarl-Toothed 

after Veruca Salt

I realize now that I live
in my own wilderness. In summer

you might find me boiling flower petals
on my stove. You can’t see

what war this is and it’s disappointing.
I bite my lip, try not to split it,

stay low. 2019 could kill me
and I hold that in my throat like a blossom

to savor. This is the new shape of me,
kept together with ache.

I try to hold back the tongue
of this self but she catches my center

and in that I am centered. This
is the cradle that catches a cautious daughter—

can you feel her? I’ve been told my anger
will give me cancer, but

this is a fight I need
and I make sure to show my teeth.

I chew through the leash, knock myself out
at night with benzos

and antihistamines, dream the water
is a creature

clawing at my thighs. I’ve been told
to calm down and I chew

holes through that wall, past the solid oak
of your door. Let loose

I am an atrocity of mouth
and axe—tooth by tooth I unbury myself

from America’s lawn.
I become a bomb, a tangle of hair to

crack the sidewalk, and I will write
and wait and carry

what grows in that fissure,
any barb or blossom that might thrive.

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture and her work has been widely published in magazines. She is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee, Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night, We’re Doing Witchcraft, 17 seventeen XVII and Behind, All You’ve Got. Kristin is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Porkbelly Press.