'Carry the Light' Excerpt: Eating Your Young

Editor's Note: For the first time in the history of the San Mateo County Fair, a 300-page anthology has been published that includes more than 100 stories, poems and essays from writers who submitted award-winning work for the fair's literary contest. The idea was the brainchild of Bardi Rosman Koodrin, a San Bruno resident who runs the fair's literary contest, and the anthology, titled "Carry the Light," features work from many Peninsula writers.

This poem, which appears in the San Mateo County Fair anthology Carry the Light, is a playful Villanelle about the bond between mother and baby, in all its light-filled love and unspoken darkness.

From p. 45, "Eating Your Young"

Some animals eat their young alive

Pure. Full of new life force

Who wouldn’t want to imbibe?

Home, finally I have arrived

When Sophie kisses me on the lips

Some animals eat their young alive

The vampire drinks to survive

Taste that energy, feel it pulse the body

Who wouldn’t want to imbibe?

I squeeze her tight, so tight she cries

I release but want to crush again, devour her as

Some animals eat their young alive

But really she is the vampire, I surmise

Sucking the life force out of my breasts, my body

Who wouldn’t want to imbibe?

Taking me in, milk in. Transforming she writhes

A new body—something, someone pure

Some animals eat their young alive

Who wouldn’t want to imbibe?

Excerpted from "Carry the Light" with the permission of Sand Hill Review Press, the publisher. The book is available for purchase for $12 on Amazon.com.

Originally from Syracuse, NY, Lisa Meltzer Penn is a Belmont resident. For more information about Penn and her work, visit www.lisameltzerpenn.com.

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