Meghan Brinson
Fragrant Inferno

you said you were done with yelling and told me to be good.
A woman like me is not good.

good is a sorry kind of third-rate glory.

when I left I went out
into the desert, and I loved it.
it was red sand, it was shouting, it howled.

now it is quiet as salt, quiet as a bruise
and I think about the days when I loved your slapped face,
your scratched neck, and I rubbed you all over
with nettles
so you would never stop itching.

man of dust
man of fire

I am still a piece of dry wood
under this skin smooth as a blue scale
and my hair rustles, hisses
who will set me on fire?

why are you so hateful? I loved
the image you were made in, the image that can only say
its own name over and over and tries to make everything look like itself

desert, goddess of emptiness—take as much
as you want and shape it in your mouth
go ahead
name everything after yourself

I am wild for a burning of what you call will
come for me in the holy
red chaos
that your god is
choking on

*

Meghan Brinson is from Charleston, South Carolina, where she graduated from the College of Charleston before attending the Prague Summer Program in Creative Writing. She graduated with an MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University, where she taught as an international fellow at the University of Singapore and served as poetry editor of the literary magazine Hayden’s Ferry Review. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Gulf Coast, The Greensboro Review, Pebble Lake Review, The Southern Women’s Review, and others.

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