I am a cannibal
Writings on consumption for Valentines Day
Chocolate covered strawberries, teddy bears, and anatomical hearts alive and beating, ripe for eating. Valentines day is finally here. Happy Valentines to those who celebrate, and happy (early) Lupercalia.
On this day of love, and desire, todays writings will consist of poems, and written rambles relating to cannibalism as a metaphor for desire. I’ve packed this newsletter to the brim with inner fantasies, favourite quotes, art, words you can use to inspire your own writing and more, expect this letter to be a little more on the risqué 18+ side.
I want to fill my mouth with your name. I want to eat you whole.
— Ode to the Apple by Pablo Neruda
I am going to eat you ~ A fictional fantasy
when I lick a stripe up his neck, savouring the intoxicating taste of skin lingering on every tastebud, he hasn’t the faintest clue the animal he’s locked in with. A flash of fear would greet his face when my hot breath touches his ear with the whispered words ‘I wonder how many bites it would take for me to swallow you whole.” He can’t tell if I’m being serious or if this is just what gets me off. My teeth keep grazing his neck, trying to find the spot that makes his breath hitch the most. Gotcha. Light bites and nips are nothing new but hes a stranger in this strange room unexpectedly caught in the clamp that is my jaw. I imprint a mark that could identify me by my dental reccords. Still hard but he’s teetering closer onto the side of panic when I bite harder and harder on every inch of bare skin like a woman starved. We’re kissing and I can’t get enough, any closer, any more of him in my mouth. “I’m going to eat you.” My nails are scratching up the veins on his arm and my only thought is that I’m going to take his body in my mouth and strip thr flesh straight off his bones.
I choked / on such longing I couldn’t spit out. Yes, desire is so different / when God bore you hungry.
— Yves Olade, from Belovéd; Slaughterhouse
Love Slowly Kills by Adrian Borda, 2012.
“A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.”
― Georges Bataille
Poem #1 ~ Animalistic
there is a pervasive
animalistic instinct that gnaws
from inside the unevolved
part of my brain.
the urge for my teeth
to be embedded in skin,
for nails to rip open a back.
all composure wears thin
at the scent of cologne and sweat,
at the sight of hands on the wheel.
brain turns to mush
overtaken by an insatiable appetite
when I watch you roll up the sleeves
of your a dress shirt.
the urge is too great
for my fingers to dig in and rip you to shreds
Glasgow Cathedral 2024
“The corruption begins with the mouth, the tongue, the wanting. The first poem in the world is I want to eat.”
— Fruits & Vegetables: Poems By Erica Jong (Holt, 1971)
Mini poem #2 ~ Hungry Kisses
down to the bone, my starving soul salivates.
infected with an appetite no man can satiate.
I am hungry for his touch, hungry for a neck in which I can sink my teeth.
Once I was told that in my kiss, hunger could be felt in my soul.
— Dante e Virgilio all'Inferno -- William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1850
A house named Valentine- A short fiction story
Richmond, Yorkshire 2024
I’m taking the opportunity of a Valentines themed newsletter to talk a little bit about a fiction project I have been working on for the past year.
“A house named Valentine” is a short story that follows Charlotte, a woman of the 1800s, and her decline as her marriage and mental health deteriorates. Charlotte and her husband move into their new home where she slowly becomes more and more obsessed, eventually turning on her loved ones and falling in love with the house, humanizing it and attempting to become one with it.
She does everything in her power to keep the house for herself, raging at her children, sabotaging the other women in her life as she fears they will attempt to steal it. This story is one of a woman suffering depression and delusions as a result of the time period where she is unable to leave her husband, get help, and live a life she chooses for herself.
Charlotte is openly dissatisfied with her sex life, and her desire’s to be with Valentine are a battle of shame and wanting. Overall this story is inspired of course my favourite trope- consumption as a metaphor for love. As Charlotte attempts to become one with the house, she finds herself consuming it.
This has been a passion project of mine over the past year, and though it is not yet avaliable to read, I am looking to have it published by the end of the year, so expect updates (hopefully!) soon.
“The Kiss” — by Malcolm T. Liepke 2016
“And even as I'm kissing him and kissing him and kissing him, I wish I were kissing him, wanting more, more, more, more, like I can't get enough, never will be able to get enough.”
— Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun
Words to inspire you this Valentines Day
As a lover of words, I seek out unique words to inspire my poetry, so below I’ve listed some of my favourite words that relate to the themes of Valentines day love, desire, and attraction in the hopes it may inspire your writing.
Basorexia- The sudden and overwhelming desire to kiss someone
Auralism- Being sexually attracted to the sound of someones voice
Odaxelagnia- Arousal from biting/being bitten
Cafuné (V) to run your fingers through your lovers hair
Cheiloproclitic (adj) - being attracted to somones’s lips or mouth
Ustulation (n) - a burning lust
Tristful (adj) - a deep yet romantic melancholy
Akrasia (n) - a lack of self-control
“Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.” — Sylvia Plath ‘Who’ poem, 1962
Poem #3 - Pomegranate love
I eat
and eat and
eat
spitting out pits sipping only the juice, a saccharine sweet
sticky
and biting and
potent, all-consuming in one taste
I drink
and thirst desire and
drink till I could drown
dripping down my lips, sour stains I can't clean up without a creeping blush
I writhe
and jolt and yearn
for a pomegranate love
replacing unbecoming lust that cracks me open and eats me
whole
— Muzzle, by Stephen Mackey
“I am fragile and unholy. Open. Ravage. Eat.”
— Tanaka Mhishi, Literary Sexts II
Thank you for consuming todays edition of The Ghoulish Gazette, though somewhat disturbing, cannibalism is a great tool very effective in writing and media and one I find helps convey the deepest parts of me via writing poetry.
Until the next, stay weird
Kaci xc
love this so much!! and “a house named valentine” sounds so interesting, I can’t wait to read it some day!