The Mean Bone in Your Body | Matt Zambito

duns a nickel under your pillow
for every tooth knocked out

with knuckles. The sucker’s
tied to your aorta like an anchor

too big for its boat. It’s a little
sickle. It honks, flips-off,

fractures. It would hate amp-
utation, but fearing no knives,

it hides as if a child criminal:
it thinks everything’s a game.

Matt Zambito is the author of The Fantastic Congress of Oddities, and two chapbooks, Guy Talk and Checks & Balances. His poetry and prose are forthcoming in swamp pink, The Adroit Journal, The MacGuffin, Melange: A Journal of Prose Poetry and the Arts, Great Lakes Review, and elsewhere. Originally from Niagara Falls, he has lived in Ohio, Idaho, Washington, and New York, where he now resides with his rescue dog, Sadie.