Sara Tantlinger’s debut collection of poetry, Love For Slaughter, is now live on Amazon in both print (link)and Kindle (link). Previously, her works have appeared in such publications such as Page & Spine, The Literary Hatchet, Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, and the HWA Poetry Showcase Volume II.

To celebrate this release, we wanted to post two of our favorites from this selection of works, and we hope you like them, too:

Spider Heart

Your heart crawled

from your mouth

on skinny legs

skulked toward my lips,

 

I swallowed

it down

and dreamt of flies,

diseased and buzzing

 

demanding blacker, stickier love

until tiny wings cling like cobwebs

to my knees

and I leave a sticky trap

where ever I roam.

 

You make my bite sharper,

the curve of my smile colder,

and you know I am at my best

when I kill right after sex.

 

Thank you for the malevolence,

I’ll wear it well,

beneath the red hourglass

of my spider heart.

Eye Candy

I make your eyes

burst like blueberries

between my teeth,

soothing my tongue

with the cool juice

of your navy irises.

The cracks of my

lips stick together

with delicate drops

of cobalt nectar,

making me a glutton

for such candied ruin.