Artwork © Peter Urkowitz

 

There Are Caterpillars in my Eyes

Every morning they wiggle out my pupils
and eat the houseplants
I replace every night.

The leaves always have tiny, unhealing bite marks
and designs, trapezoids and mosaics
and a hideous portrait of me.

When they’re full they come back
to digest, shoot the shit, form steel-strong bonds—
and don’t invite me.

I’d get rid of them,
but I’m waiting—patiently—for the day
they spin their silk coffins and rest, the day
they sprout golden purple
and my irises reflect their caged fluttering.

 

Dustin P Brown has a BA in creative writing from Western Michigan University. He was also a fiction reading intern at Third Coast Magazine and an editorial intern at New Issues Poetry & Prose. These days he freelance edits as Vaccei Literary Editing and lives in Spain where with his boyfriend and two cats.

Peter Urkowitz lives in Salem, Massachusetts, where he works in a college library. He has published poems and art in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Oddball Magazine, Sextant, Molecule, Mantis, Wilderness House Literary Review, Nixes Mate Review, and the Lily Poetry Review. His Fake Zodiac Signs chapbook was published by Meat for Tea Press in early 2020, and he collaborated with Alex Ness to publish Tales of Lost Kingdoms in 2024.