Published in The Santa Clara Review
Those mechanical jaws
consume more than flies;
they pierce poetry with their fangs,
love letters mangled and dangling
from their mouths like shedding
lizard skin, like molting velvet antlers.
That cutting spittle dissolves metaphor
to meat, transfigures tankas to teeth—
it is a serum of decay, a perfume
that enchants the damned as much
as it preaches to the blessed.
Jaden Fong 