if I told you       what migraine tastes like
      you wouldn’t believe me    

but listen to your skin rot
and        ask me again.

the lamp knows
more than it lets on. 

if it wants to burn it will        apparitions unfolding from its
     bulb         misting the air

with summons to your       gravesite.

ghosts have an appetite too              and those like vultures
      miss what it feels like to breathe

so they will take yours—
     ours—

and feed on it the way God

 fed on your childhood terrors.

you don’t have to look        to know what the autopsy
      says.          

silence will not do here       nor voice        just shame

of the type that boils in your belly

boils the way it sings knells like a grandmother’s.

Madison Zehmer is an emerging poet and wannabe historian from North Carolina. She has published work in Isacoustic and Wards Lit Mag and forthcoming work in Ethel Zine, the Santa Ana River Review, La Piccioletta Barca, and the Origami Poems Project. Her twitter is @madisonzehmer and her instagram is @mirywrites.