Three poems // Benjamin DeVos

death

i see in your teeth

the limbs of all people

being chewed and eaten

you are consuming everything

you are killing everything

can you please turn back

into my friend

burial

a revelation is seeing the body

of a deceased sibling

a beautiful child dressed in lace

whose face has been retouched to the point

where by contrast you look at them

in an ideal state of total putrefaction

maggots and other orgiastic eating machines

suffering and inflicting suffering

everything must die

before it can be honored

ossuary

not all death decays

skeletal remains settle

in the ocean

bone becomes rock

buried deep

in temporary graves

the earth’s crust

made of bodies

//

Benjamin DeVos is a 23-year-old writer from Philadelphia. His work has been published in Reality Beach, Alien Mouth, Word Riot, decomP, and other places. His collection of short stories Madness Has a Moment and Then Vanishes Before Returning Again was published over the summer with Dostoyevsky Wannabe.