Ellery Beck

Throng

There must be a name for this search for exposed
skin--we're swarmed, bug-bitten, frenzied. We must
be artificially sweetened, shelved for a later
date. Must be some kind of syrupy or sauced, something
to get stuck in. Must be saved,
saran-wrapped, shelved for later. Must be my Sunday
tea, seven-minutes steeped and unsweetened.
Bitter. Must be spitting out the seeds, already
pomegranate pulled apart. Must be that sugared
water. Stained in every crevice.

Sequel

All this light pretending to be sound—wait here, skip
the scene if you’d like. Watch, your soft

stapled to mine, slightly-lit and skin-
exposed. I want to be your b-roll baby, pinned

to every background scene. I want to be the picture
frame in the close shot of your family

home, pressed into the wall. Stuck until
the unstitching. To keep playing this now

means force, means my film rolled
flat. Our freshly manicured violence plays out

in the credits closing behind us. Write me
a new script—I’ll keep this same one singing back.

Ellery Beck is an undergraduate student majoring in English at Salisbury University. They have poems published or forthcoming in Zone 3, Colorado Review, Fugue, Poet Lore, Sugar House Review, Slipstream, Potomac Review, and elsewhere. They were also one of the winners of the 2019 AWP Portland Review flash contest. They are the Founding Interview Editor for The Shore Poetry.