Tributaries: "I Have a Second Stomach"

By Kate Finegan

for peaches

     eaten     ripe

          over kitchen sinks in summer

berries   plucked     from Northwoods balds

     arsenic

          in     apple seeds

skin cells     I breathe from

     your pillow       at night

spiders that slide

          down my     tongue      

               in sleep

     crowns

from teeth     ground to dust

          particulate matter          from walking

 city streets

          all the times I bit my

     tongue to

blood

     all the times I have told you     I’m awful

and all the times you     have told me

     I’m not            and all the times

          this earth’s

told me it’s awful and     all the ways

it has shown me

it’s not

---

Kate Finegan has a short story chapbook forthcoming with Penrose Press in November 2018. Her work has won contests with Thresholds, Phoebe Journal, Midwestern Gothic, and The Fiddlehead; been runner-up for The Puritan's Thomas Morton Memorial Prize; and been shortlisted for the Cambridge Short Story Prize.