A Branch Grows Out of My Torso/ poem by Noah Roberts

Stick a sharpened bone through my side
broken into a shard by a stone
from the ground in the forest where
in my desperate night the dark sky
is littered and speckled with
blood from the insides of my body

glowing like fireflies in the mist
if the whole world turned to evening
upon the edge of dusk or dim
groves where trees stand upon us
fastened to the ground my head
lays against the roots

if I am in a manic episode the
world is speaking to me in
tongues sprouting from walls and
roots of trees and I am a small
mechanism in a large mechanism
android homunculus built of fear
and loss and grief wondering

would there be such a thing as love
without evisceration

//////



Noah David Roberts is a non-binary poet and artist based in Philadelphia, PA. Roberts has released 3 collections: Us v. Them, 2017, about the nature of sexual trauma and political violence; Strips, a divagation of the self, an endless ranting masterpiece; and Slime Thing [and other poems], a scream of anti-capitalism and stream of frustrated proletariat consciousness. Since publication of their first book, Roberts has been published in Big Scream, Big Hammer, Tribes Magazine, Horror Sleaze Trash, and more. In 2021, Roberts placed in the Judith Stark poetry contest. Their Instagram handle is @the.apocalypse.poet.