head full of teeth, a colic
monster, cocktail of red
milk spotting his lips
left my only mother black
& blue, bones a legion
of aging daisies, face
gutted of light, his tongue
a reservoir of taste buds
an incubus whispering
here this blood drink
Amber Atiya is a multidisciplinary poet whose work incorporates elements of performance, book arts, and visual arts. Her poems and nonfiction have appeared in Boston Review, PEN America, Poets & Writers Blog, Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color, and elsewhere. A proud native Brooklynite, she is a member of a women’s writing group that will be celebrating sixteen years in 2018. Her chapbook the fierce bums of doo-wop (Argos Books) is currently in its second printing.