“The First Tingling of Bewilderment” © Bill Wolak

 

Auto-Cannibal Elegy with Tablecloth and Echo

There was a knife. Or a fork. No — it was a metaphor.
I was hungry. No, not hungry — just full of memory I didn’t ask to keep.
Everything on the plate tasted like origin.
My mouth opened like a chapel collapsing inward.
I ate the first time I said nothing.
Then the third time. Then the last.
I gnawed the small dishonesties that dressed up as manners.
I chewed the face I wore to my mother’s funeral.
Somewhere, a choir of apologies tuned their throats.
I tried to join in.
I forgot the words.
I swallowed them.
Now the world lives inside me.
Spoiling.

 

Alexander “Al” Scott Pearce Baker is a naturalist, poet, and philosopher based in Halifax. His work explores horror, mythology, and metaphysics through the lens of natural history. He holds a Master’s in Philosophy and has published fiction, poetry, and academic research with Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Dark Harbor, and The Lucky Lizard.

Bill Wolak is a poet, collage artist, and photographer who has just published his eighteenth book of poetry entitled All the Wind’s Unfinished Kisses with Ekstasis Editions. His collages and photographs have appeared recently in the 2025 Dirty Show in Detroit, Amorous Art 2025 in Indianapolis, the 2025 Rochester Erotic Arts Festival, the 2020 International Festival of Erotic Arts (Chile), the 2020 Seattle Erotic Art Festival, the 2018 Montreal Erotic Art Festival, and Naked in New Hope 2018. He was a featured artist in the book Best of Erotic Art (London, 2022).