after Study of a Baboon, Francis Bacon, 1953

I refuse to be                understood by my nearness

                      to manhood / o yes I am                of my kind

of a want to be                hurt / though how you frame me

                      is your only safety / a habitable divide

cutting light into diamonds / I own                how wide I can be

                      split / most                jawed in my looking back and now what

I must do to your every                edge / what I want

                      to hurt you                to make you nothing / I promise you

everything of the space                I hold / an opening

                      yours                dedicated between my teeth

Taylor Brunson is a poet living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her work has recently been featured in perhappened  and Moist Poetry Journal. She serves as an assistant poetry editor for Four Way Review and an assistant non-fiction editor for Nashville Review.

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