by Margaret Kathryn Warren
she conjures a collage of living tattoos: beetles creep
toward knees. a toad smirks, looking at a can of soup
shaped like a pack of cigarettes. a mushroom
patch dances in purple above her elbow. Muse isn’t happy
with the fox on her breast. though it winks, its feet
wrinkle at the ankles. the fur smudges,
but i can’t help but admire the shape of the tail,
a fizzy spiral galaxy, like grape soda spilled
across her chest. i think she has something to teach me.
she tells me about the mice. since she was a kid,
they’ve swarmed her. they won’t leave her.
they nest inside her shoes. they broke into her
tattoo supplies. they ate all the ink,
stained their lips, + puked
familiar black bile. they snuck into her bed, tore into her
skin. even now, i watch them hang from her limbs.
she stamps black ink deep
into pores. the mice pull apart flesh to ooze
inside the folds, white fur smudged grey + pink.
she tells me she can see bulbous mice pulsing
blue beneath my skin.
i am begging her: tattoo my lips
with spit + let them peel away.
find me: nibbled, singing
shreds strewn across her
basement floor. find me peeling
mice from our skin so they sing.
Margaret Kathryn Warren (Maggie) is a queer and disabled poet who writes about love and toads. They work as an adjunct English instructor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where they earned their Master’s Degree of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Media Arts in 2024. Their work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Half Mystic Journal, Bear Review, Amethyst Review, Shoegaze Literary, and Croak Lit. You can find more of their work at www.maggiewarren.com or linktr.ee/toadpoetmaggs.