I have a message from God for you. A minute
from now I will drown in a glass of daughter.

I gave up judgment to be closer to the floorboards.
I saw that I am not outside-outside. Noise of a club

circles back in like a saccharine plague.
The sound of man like the fat that hugs the

plunged sword. Oh, but how I entertain eternity—
a clear message nourishes as broth does, so I stir

and pluck out hot bones barehanded. I saw how
I whisper my laws, when my hunger strikes

a decade and half too late. When I pull the half-life
out of syntax, decay rises out of time, my scarab throat.

I saw at the park I let you lift me like rucksack.
The court spilled out of me even as I held it.

I was thick dough when you ran us away. I never
knew you. Under a branch in my sportiest dress,

my breasts flattened to quarry—a surface clean,
fit for every turning wheel. You handed me a vial

and I’m supposed to get it. I saw the persuasion crushed
through a whole body as I reminisce the entire.

How I’ve gnawed the rims of cups. My desire to forget
left me a cast-iron mouth. In this book, a message

from God is a very bad thing, the capitalizing hilt
against the temple, a segment so soft and body

I believe briefly that God has a message—why else would
the skull shape around a kill switch? In this book, take me

To eat, open a skin of milk and give me drink. When I ask
men in the pews to stand and fix their laps, faith is a spotted

garment, a material to boast certain rupture.
The blank wind sails innuendos elsewhere, a blade

made dull by prescription. The men blare techno forever.
On that day, I shook a prince until his whiskers

flew into the punch bowl. I quaked my flesh and smeared
like a white donkey left for the buzzing dark. I wrote

like I was waiting. Face to face with memory, the letter
misses. I saw I was ready to make use of loss.

Photograph © Simone Finotti 

This poem is from Natalie Eilbert’s forthcoming collection Indictus, published by Noemi Press. An option to preorder will be available soon. Check Natalie Eilbert’s website (natalie-eilbert.com) for updates.