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POETRY
Let Me No Longer Walk Away
Nina Reljić

00:00 / 01:11

from the hunger that is  asked of me  I want  the poem
that  sits   just  beneath  the  skin  and  to walk  towards
something   with   hot   blood   and   urgency   I    want
real appetite without virtue or sin I want to smoke  less
or I want more lung  I  want  the  dignity  of red apples
the rigour of morning through any unfamiliar window

and I have wanted  to  get  back  to  the boy whose

hair  smelled  of  fresh   earth   who    was  a  slick  love 

poem already in the making and if not I then who else
will  bite the  boy  whose  bed  I  laid  in  when  he said
he could dump  my  body  out back no one would find
me and I don’t  mean  bite  in  the fun way what I want
is to gut a fish  so  cleanly  I  won’t know language only
scales and today  I  walked  through a forest the colour
of money and between the trees light mottled it’s there

I buried my speaker  in  dirt  but  she wouldn’t stay put

her  hands  kept  erupting half moving out of darkness

half  reaching  for  the  living  when  something  insists
on resurrection what can you do but take her home

Nina Reljić is a writer from London. Her writing is published or forthcoming in The White Review, 3:AM, New Ohio Review, Image, Anthropocene Poetry, and more. Her debut chapbook is forthcoming with Wrong Publishing and she has a Writing MFA from Columbia University. She lives in New York City. You can find her lurking on Twitter: @nina_relish

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