Lena Kinder

Midnight Swim in the Lake of Metamorphosis

You said we should be mermaids, and so you

kicked your legs until they turned into a tail

with scales all green and green.  

I chose to be a crocodile and dove in the water

until I found a fish, caught it between my teeth,

their points all sharp and sharper still.  

When I surfaced, you sang, and I listened, eating

eyes and scales and bones, dove and rose and dove

and rose each time, my stomach, unquenched.  

I emptied the lake, and you floated on the water

its surface incandescent, its depths, an abyss

you did not feel the danger, but I did.  

I watched you from below, and my jaw

unlatched, opening wide with lust—

I pulled you into the dark with me,  

and we rolled until you broke in two

a mist of red, a taste of blood, a body now

halved. As I ate,  

I saw your human parts, a silent scream, and my hunger still coming.

Let Me Ask God       How to Reanimate the Dead;

how to break the spine of time,            moon’s milk-light now a cold corpse,                                    

a way to bring you back to me            with necrotic fingers, pressing earth and

my body, only half-alive, in the            sea, a rhythm of quakes and tides,

ligaments of two souls, now lost            bodies now brought back, resuscitated.

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Lena Kinder has an MA in creative writing from the University of Southern Mississippi and is pursuing an MFA in creative writing at Hollins University. Her works can be found in or forthcoming from Wigleaf, Salt Hill, Pinch, HAD, Flash Frog, Bending Genres, and more. She is the editor-in-chief of Folklore Review.