Needed

It grows,
Blooming from shrapnel kisses,
Enveloping around like
Fleshy
Haemophilic
Nacre

Wandering thing, small
Floating vivisection
Nuzzling the earth for,
Um
Something—
Something to,
To need,
To Need it

A finger will graze it
On the exposed ribs And
it will fall over,
In the ecstasy of a
Man in the
Galleys
And the finger will

Rip,
Rip out the skin-pearl still
Beating, barely beating,
Burrowing into the
sinews

And the man,
The man behind the
Finger, past the arm and
Shoulder and
Teeth, sharp gnashing,
He will thumb a gaping
Pitiful hole
Into the heart and
Oh god, I
I can’t say it
He
He uses
He u
ses it
He

Needed.

The thing will stand up
And it will command
Earthly body
To walk, just walk
Just anywhere
That isn’t here

The pain,
The dull swallowing of
A being,
Metastasises into a
Knot of
frayed vessels and
Flayed nerves,
Growing back a heart like
A scar tissue pomegranate
That dares to
Has the gall to
Keep the thing
awake

And so it will wake,
Trembling and cracking every
Joint in that unholy body
As it crawls along,
Searching for
Something to
Som
ething to need It

By Leda Glass

Biography:

Leda Glass grew up with one foot in the grave and a pen in hand. A self-described ghost, she doesn’t know why she’s here on earth or if she even is, but she knows she must write. Every poem is an attempt to crystalise a thought, a tendril, a fragment, usually through raw and dreamy imagery. When there is so much to say and so little space to feel, Glass gets a little scrap of piece in every poem.