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Monsters Not Yet Imagined in the Age of Witches
Poet: Jude Marr
imagine a skull, sliced
from brow to occipital bun: a head once full
of knowing, now scraped
clean: imagine
chill air against an exposed septum
smells like fear: bare
bones of the middle ear—hammer anvil stirrup—still
vibrate to hooves on frost-hard sod
after centuries of silence: imagine
a mandible jutting upward
as the rope tightens: bone burning
as flesh: breath’s a memory of lung-
lessness: imagine
being free: scraped and sanded: no
random thoughts adhere: no
ice pick ideas or sticky-note
remembrances: imagine
a crownless skull, aged
and cracked: museum numbers inked on brown-stained
bone: a catalogue as eulogy: curators who value
only what remains. Imagine.
Jude Marr is a Pushcart-nominated nonbinary poet. Jude’s first full-length collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds, came out from Animal Heart Press in 2020 and they also have a chapbook, Breakfast for the Birds, from Finishing Line Press in 2017. Their work has also appeared in many journals. A native Scot, Jude recently returned to live in the UK after 10 years of teaching, writing, and learning in the US.