"The Very Hungry Caterpillar", "Doggy style", & "An open letter to my husband’s dysphoria" by Zoe “Moss” Korte

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Imagine if March was a summer month

whose beard said jadedly, you’re too young to

be jaded, and the world went on jading.

I thought maybe if my wings were still damp

I could cozy up right where I hatched from

but must have gotten fat nibbling my

way out because on my eighteenth birthday

the hammock ripped right out from under me

and the air punched from my gut smelled like tea

leaves and the darkness inside my lungs. The

wettest thunder comes before the rain, wet

like the last hours of pregnancy in

a car at dusk, the sky flickering like

this hope that it will ever be over with.

Doggy style

I wish I had a cock so I could learn

to be vulnerable. Instead my cravings

are sad & filthy like a pitbull’s. But

don’t blame the pussy. He is a junkyard

of moons, leaking radioactive fumes.

He is a sizzling roux, enough flour

and fat to bloat a growling belly. By

night he frolics up a funk and dances

to disturb. Come dawn, they muzzle him. His

howls of smutty sorrow turn to whimpers.

If the wound won’t heal, tell it to heel. Say

come back to me. Say good boy. Then take me

out back to the tool shed and put me out

of my misery. Say it’s for the best.

An open letter to my husband’s dysphoria

I mean, this was a cavernous childhood only the small

could fit into. He was just a cricket of a boy, chirping

at the ceramic sky until it dropped the moon, which burst

into verses and fish too plural to put a shirt on. When he

touched me, my whole soul turned a fierce teal and I wept.

My dad doesn’t have a beard anymore, but he bought me

an orchid that only bloomed once, so it either got root rot

or I forgot to water it, which is also how churches die. And

so what if my husband has hairy teats like a real mammal.

Not to mention gender and genre are the same in Spanish,

and some novelists grow up to be poets. God knows I did.

All I know is, he summoned me in the language of

changelings. No other call could rouse the likes of me.

Zoe "Moss" Korte is a mad & queer poet whose work has appeared in Maudlin House, new words {press}, Frontier Poetry, & more. They reside on Peoria & Osage land with their partner & two tortoiseshell cats. You can find them on Instagram @zoekpoetry.