THE DREAM IN WHICH I AM ANIMAL

when animal I forge
the iron and gnaw
the skin-casing blue I

forget when animal I hurricane
myself crave the escape

from my own deadly
mouth I feed

and am fed by routine
when animal I have

no name other
than animal but you

still call me girl

Caroline Chavatel is the author of White Noises (Greentower Press, 2019), which won The Laurel Review’s 2018 Midwest Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, AGNI Online, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cosmonaut’s Avenue, and The Journal, among others. She has won or placed in prizes from The Cossack Review, phoebe, and Gigantic Sequins and was nominated for 2018 and 2019 Best New Poets. She is Poetry Editor of Puerto del Sol, editor and co-founder of Madhouse Press, and co-founding editor of The Shore.