[POETRY][09/05/25]How Could I Be So Vicious
Two Poems by Madeline Crawford
Tummy time
when it’s my tummy time i’m all
snake i’ve got a target and it’s to crawl one day and
then maybe walk my foaming sea is a
quilt to slime on it was sewn together by
some god woman who knows how salt works
and my stars the baubles on
plastic hooks that loom over my plain soft dome
check this out i can coil i wrap i
encircle the necks mother
claps and takes credit for my voluminous fold
he has mummy’s blood-red crests and her burning eyes
now i’ve got myself into a knot that might
burst mother says it’s feeding time apple sauce that
my flicking tongue does not dissolve falls
on my scaly rolls i guess sauce must be a building block to
flesh but look at me with my
gummy teeth how could i be so vicious
My flop of an idea about space and time
my arms are like an x in front of me
as if they’re intersecting highways on two planes
and I’m trying to explain how cars can have the same coordinates
at the same time without ever meeting
but no one at the table gets it or they don’t care
one of them thinks I’m kidding
they start talking about other things
like the sun penetrating glass and the beauty of that
something isn’t making sense to them
don’t they get
that the only other time the cars could meet in this way
is if together they collided?
MADELINE CRAWFORD lives, teaches Latin, and writes in London. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in or are forthcoming from Die Quieter Please, mnemotope, Paloma Magazine, dadaku, The Mantelpiece, and Vast Chasm, among others. She has worked as a reader and editorial assistant for A Public Space.