A THING by JEAN MARIE HACKETT
eat the alligator left for dead in the prospect park lake
Eat skin. Eat your gluten allergy, as a starter. Eat your heart, let it dry out, cure it in salt, let it crunch and stick in your teeth like peanut brittle. Eat ghee, eat eggs, eat for your dosha, eat fertilized hatchlings. Eat loss. Eat divorce. Eat your dead babies, eat the futures they never had. Eat toes. Eat the dog you lost, five minutes down the road. Eat an alien: you in your own life. Eat dreams, eat Windex, eat nail polish remover, eat antifreeze. Eat your dead mother. Eat the disease that runs in the family. Eat the engagement ring. Eat seeds eat nuts eat the registry—really, a tagine?
Eat snow. Eat Goji berries. Eat frozen embryos. Eat rage. Eat it with fava beans. Eat it paleo. Eat it Whole Thirty with avocado. Eat shame. Eat fear. Eat toxic. Eat shots in the abdomen, eat more plants. Eat PTSD! Eat ass. Eat a man in a van. Eat organic. Eat orgasms. Eat kale! Eat catfish! Eat Tinder, Hinge, Bumble. Eat radiation like a fungus, a phantasm. Eat your alarm. Eat your snooze. Eat birthday cake. Eat the candles too. Eat your Chernobyl à la mode. Eat all you can eat of black and blue-d. Eat the alligator found in the prospect park lake. Eat abuse. Eat discarded. Eat student loan bills, eat precious moments, eat your till death do us part.
Eat a koan.
Eat the bed you made and have to lie in. Eat beds others made that you are tied in. Eat gasoline. Eat the wife. Eat petroleum straight from the pipeline, eat the oil spill of your life. Eat neglect. Eat your brain. Eat love. Eat your sign. Eat the men you slept with. Eat a sonnet. Eat your tongue. Eat dial tones. Eat Antigone. Eat the fool. Eat jizz. Eat that, not this. Eat a stripper. Eat cannabis. Eat the body. Eat the blood. Eat your ha! Eat original sin. Eat your middle, milked and mugged. Eat sloppy kiss. Eat the proposal, this one for the end. Eat the Barbie Dream House. Eat Ken. Eat Merry Christmas! Eat limp dick. Eat Tide Pods, even though they say not to. Eat mediation. Eat Instagram challenges. Eat his young, since he ate yours. Eat threats. Eat collagen. Eat his fucking Mercedes Benz. Eat Taylor’s version. Eat the beginning. Eat the end. Eat the alligator who could not survive; you did.
Eat skin: yours, his.
Swallow it.
Jean Marie Hackett is a recovered litigator turned writer and yoga teacher in Park City, Utah. She is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at Bennington. She won First Place for the Short Fiction category in the 2022 Utah Original Writing Competition, and work has appeared in Five on the Fifth.