Nancy White

Eats Like a Bird

I have no stop but teeth.
The world a bully a belly

where star tree animal cliff
go to die. Welcome sinew and rot

grub beak bark and reeking omen I
pulverize and amber everything.

Be the last wave la fin flashing
at the end of the reel the fall

complete the landing’s
not soft and I will not be sorry.
  

Happy Ever After

to remove my own name would be
suicide but the name is killing me

the sand the ice and knife of it
have to go I will tear it away eat it

with my hooves grind it into the ground
I will leave here as the animal I

began born fang and talon ready
hungry to travel high and overlapping
  

Nancy White is the author of Sun, Moon, Salt (winner of the Washington Prize), Detour, and Ask Again Later. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Review, FIELD, New England Review, Ploughshares, Rhino, and elsewhere. She serves as editor-in-chief at The Word Works in Washington, D. C. and teaches at SUNY—Adirondack in upstate New York. (website)