Purity Ritual
by and published in Edition Eight of Pomegranate
I.
A hungry bat at the call of hundreds of insects
moves from its yawning dwelling place
to the trees, full of breath. Snakes
of moon slide across the bark,
across my skin. I shed.
All my old clothes bury into the ground,
a rotting secret. I eat my share of insects.
I am awake until morning.
II.
Every morning, a man pries my jaws apart,
my head between his knees,
and files down my fangs.
The grinding is ice-cold.
He butters my snake-like skin with oil.
I cover myself with merino wool,
chew on toast with my square teeth.
I tiptoe into the trees.
I learn how the other creatures,
the bats and the snakes,
have learned to love.
Every night, I smell the katydids and the grasshoppers.
Crickets and cicadas fill the sky.
I am awake until morning.
Brenda Battad
Brenda Battad is an Electronic and Time-Based Art student at Carnegie Mellon University. She was born in the Philippines, and has since then become a 5’2 twenty-one-year-old. She primarily thinks about video art, sound, poetry, summer, Thai food, and riding her bike – but what she actually does is a mystery to many.