Tableau with Three Daughters
The first lines a road
with seven blinking teeth, vehicular
like wolves. The body begins
in contraction: red as a mouth and wide
as a well. The second holds the head
of a goat in her teeth
like an apple. A tongue,
bristled with fur. The third, heart
chambered and hung like a millstone,
a structure designed
for consumption. Every mouth
a brick, every belly a beast.
Stefanie Kirby is the author of Fruitful (Driftwood Press, 2024), winner of the Adrift Chapbook Contest, and Remainder, forthcoming from Bull City Press. Her poetry has been included in Best of the Net and Poetry Daily, and appears in West Branch, phoebe, The Massachusetts Review, The Maine Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She lives along Colorado’s Front Range with her family.