TJ Krenz
(content warning: food & eating)
WHEN I HAVE SKIPPED LUNCH AND THEN I HAVE SKIPPED DINNER TOO
Hunger is not emptiness. It is closer to
jealousy than depression. If you peer into
that hollow space you will find
a sizzling red and purple marsh,
sharp rocks that cut, and an untamed beast.
There is no void from which his bright orange eyes
will not be able to find you. He slithers
through the boiling acid with a mission
to escape, and kill. His teeth are knives
that slice, his claws a rending saw, his gaze
alive with a burning fire that will consume.
He must be tamed three times a day or else
he will climb the walls of his prison
and you will not enjoy what happens next.
WHEN MY MANAGER TALKS TO ME AT THE END OF THE DAY
I can't stand the way she looks at me,
When that tepid grin rises up on her face
like dirty toilet water to let me know
I need to stay late, and could I please
give the place a quick mop? And, oh,
make sure to double check that I turned
out the lights because I forgot the night before.
A slithering violence coils within me.
If you ask me for even one more thing
I think I shall set myself or the building
on fire—but no, that is not okay to say.
Instead I smile back, a perfect mirror
of perfect congeniality, workplace civility
masking workplace horrors while worms
crawl inside me and turn my insides
into hot soil. “Of course! Whatever you need!”
I say, and hate the cheerful brightness
that creeps into my toothless voice—No!
I am dark, I am rotten, I am a thing that crawls
in the muck in the haunted forest!
I could kill the thing inside me that can still
bow down in front of this tiny king
in her tiny kingdom. I am the frog, and
I will never be the prince. Someday
when I return to this place I will find it
rotten through to the center and crush it under foot.
WHEN I SIT IN MY APARTMENT AND WANT TO SMASH THINGS
My neighbor's laughter through the walls
can set off a bomb inside me.
Masonry crumbling, horsehair and plaster,
rebar and rust. What does she have
to be so happy about? I want to fold
the mountains like meringue
and smooth down the peaks.
The world should be like putty in my hands,
But inside me I feel sewer water, toxic gas,
thumbtacks, a rising TV static.
I need a tetanus shot for when I've cut myself
on the jagged edge of a social interaction,
when I remember the times it should have been me,
but wasn't. Jealousy tightens around my chest like cords
and I can't move. But if I can cut them,
I could expand and swallow the world.
I HAVE A DISEASE THAT NOBODY CAN SEE YET
There's something about me that just isn't right.
When God in her infinite wisdom was
twisting the cordage of my DNA, perhaps she was
distracted. Sometimes when I wake up
the whole world is sideways and this eye
or that ear has taken the day off. I thank them
when they return, because someday
they won't. I make my coffee with numb hands
and an empty head and pretend that
someone else has entered my kitchen
to do it for me. They tell me to be thankful
for the time I have, because some people
die even younger than me—the sort of easy thing
the plutocrat might say to the pauper.
TJ Krenz lives in rural Texas
and can be found on twitter @TJKrenz