Meghan Joyce Tozer
“Animals, animals, a-ni-mals!”
Expand yourself
within me.
Press up, heart-ward, clutch
and snatch my breath—You
build your body in darkness:
Just another animal
of organs and bones.
Break my ribs
into tiny fingers;
my pelvis
forms a small, smooth skull.
Bend my spine into the crawling shape
of knees.
Siphon my blood
as I did my mother’s
before you:
Waste the host.
The Majority of White Women Voters
We gave birth to monsters
who ate us all up.
Weasel teeth chewed
(nibble, nibble)
from the middle,
little
by
little.
Lulled us, whispering, “Hush,”
they told us
it was all in fun
—we swallowed our tongues—
till…
Pop! we go,
mawed to gore,
drip in spittle-clumps from stubbled jaws,
and die
in parts.
But you,
we haunt; our songs fill up
the silence
of your bloody supper. You,
who fed your daughters to your sons.
Meghan Joyce Tozer is a writer, music historian, and soprano originally from Massachusetts. Library Journal called her debut novel Night, Forgotten (2022) “an artfully crafted story, which leads up to one unforgettable twist that will leave readers gasping.” After graduating from Harvard in 2008, Meghan earned a MM in voice performance and a PhD in music history. Much of her public writing has appeared under the pen name Emily Lindin, including UnSlut: A Diary and a Memoir (2015), a 2016 column for Teen Vogue, and the award-winning UnSlut: A Documentary Film (2016), which she also directed. Her personal story-sharing activism inspires her poetry.