Notes on flesh


The bowl of citrus-scented
Sicilian olives

you ate one by one sucking the pips of
until what you tasted was

your own
blood only 

demonstrates more clearly all
one eats already soon will be

oneself.
                 FELL'S
OFFICIAL GUIDE TO

Knots
AND HOW TO TIE THEM

reads the title of one
book in the free book bin

whose introduction lists
in painstaking detail all

the ways one might die from in-
sufficient knot-tying expertise —

a cause of death which is, it
says, impossible to extensively 

survey but must be
comparable in frequency to

drowning — addressing,
in its morbid, practical

way, the eternal concerns of poetry:
namely, threading line through eye,

how and to what may we
fasten these, our fragile hour-

bitten bodies,
to hold them?

Joel Keith

Joel Keith is a writer and musician living on unceded Wurundjeri land. Their writing has appeared in IslandAntithesisBabyteethThe Big Issue and elsewhere. They are an editor at Voiceworks and intern at The Suburban Review. You can find them on Instagram @keithyjoel, or anywhere else, happier.

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