Seven Sins: Gluttony
The second sin
Excess. Indulgence. Selfishness. Madness. Consuming.
Trough - Samantha Lazar
Look at you over there
Come here
You look like an absolute snack
Are you ready to be consumed?
Bottomless maw/canyon
Enough talk
Just get in my mouth
I’ll jump in yours
Let’s swallow each other
Whole
Turn our organs inside out
Make like snakessss
The shapes of us like rats bulging
Feed me
Put spleen where lungs live
Wrap your fullness around
And up and through
Feel then
The pull to purge
Itch itch itch
Scrape
Look at it then- the weight of it all
Look at me
We must make room for the
Space invasion
So now I feel nothing
Gimme rawest emptiness
Lead me to your trough
Gimme
You
Again
Or
Someone else
Something else
You burn a hole in my soft belly flesh
Some of you oozes out
I lap it up
In some drive-through parking lot
Littered with leftovers
The juice of it all
Stains
© Samantha Lazar 2025
It Goes as Follows - Phillip Hurt
Fuck restraint
I want it all.
This is ‘Merica goddammit!
Land of the free to get shitty
everyda(y) that ends with the letter “Y”
Home of the brave enough to
xtra large my extra large supersize BIGmac
Why? oh y? you ask
It’s because it’s never earned, until it’s learned
and takes a lot of work to get there
as a boy Always watching = Never speaking
taught to be seen and not heard
It goes as follows:
● drink 1 pulls the workboots off
● 3rd drink demands a second heaping plateful of Hamburger Helper
the cheeseburger macaroni kind
● drink number 6 is a flinching and cowering mom
it’s funny to dad and makes him laugh
● 10 drinks in now, he’s angry........ or not
regardless, she really deserves it now
● drink 15 rarely reaches the bottom
just a snoring La-Z-Boy recliner
All is a requirement
to dress in our Sunday’s best the next morning
Boys always learn the best lessons from their fathers
and
A Boy will grow into their own man, watching from the dinner table
* * *
Dad was either wrong about everything
or right... so now it’s my time
I found it DOES take a lot of work
First, is fun and games
with beer bongs and sing-a-longs
tested the limits of how much my body can take
xtra, extra larging my 2nds of everything
and kept looking for the (8)th day of the week
just one more day
Next is, keeping her around
just for laughs and a punching bag
... and somewhere in the blurred middle
it all stopped being fun
and just became work
I did it Dad!
I wanted it so badly... everything you were and all that you did
I couldn’t get enough... so I too had to give it away© Phillip Hurt 2025
The Gluten-Free Glutton - Maggie McCombs
I eat for every moment I’ve been traumatized: a “No” from someone who stops at nothing to swat away my plate. I eat for the woman starving for seven hours on a plane, denied access to a safe meal: subhuman creature - Me, watching the flight tracker, a terrarium worm inching toward satiety in glacial millimeters. “Celiac: the real hunger games.” I thought, cursing the Atlantic stretch — Counting the miles down from five thousand While they deigned to ask: “Can we get you a glass of milk?” And in so doing, they smashed an empty plate across my face. … They, also - commanded me to sit on the sidewalk, of downtown D.C: 90 degrees. Said they couldn’t seat me as a patron. That wouldn’t Be fair, if I didn’t eat like everyone else; imagine that. What kindness: that the “couldn’t” doesn’t matter to these people, which is most of them. They’ve taught me mine is a disease denied Access. Compassion. Look at me: I’m meek and still waiting, waiting for my blessing While assuming, always, that pride is all I’ll get to swallow until god knows when — Food insecurity that follows me: For me, everywhere a desert. “Sorry: those are just the rules.” They’ll say Ad nauseam. But the “sorry” doesn’t cut it: Bite-sized, when you’re famished And forced to partake of air alone. … So I eat, eat, eat when I’m home, Tasting more than the mere humanity in scraps gutting mine to stuff theirs — Pockets, egos, mouths, stomach. What if all it took to bend you over in pain is one crumb? You’d do the same. Just one and Night’s over. Week’s ruined. Vomiting on the sidewalk. Shaky from ataxia — It evens out if you weigh the times that I’ve had and had not… Tell me: Does it even count as gluttony when What I'm starving for is equity? So I’m home: I succumb. I tip the scales, for once, in my favor, making my place at the table, Invite only. Call me the gluten-free glutton. You could say it’s an addiction, but I say I’m Deserving! of how my plate runneth over Two- and three-fold: ‘Til my gut grows turgid: ‘til my lips gush greasy: Here, getting while the gettin’s good — Take back the milk! I have this gustatory overdose: Heaping, wholeness, fullness, the safety I’ve made for myself, and no one is invited.
© Maggie McCombs 2025
VOID - Mia (wildflower)
ferociously avid i devour what’s not mine - i swallow up foreign sentiments occasions til i choke - a fleeting maelstrom erratic luminescent then extinct - starving for more to satisfy my immeasurable needs - frantically obsessing the next kick to feed my addiction - i binge on lacking depth revocation indifference emptiness - famished i consume i absorb to feel anything - soak up what’s not inside this hollow fathomless void
© Mia (wildflower) 2025
Bloated and Orange - H. R. Sinclair
The crystal distorts your vision
so perfectly
to plain your perception
just the blur you like
what’s happening(?)
is not what’s happening
and it’s not happening
just enough to be ignored.
¿s that a birdsong
or a chainsaw?
The gaseous intoxic
cakes all the mirrors
and clouds the gashes,
intake and exhale
all guilt and shame-
HA
who am I kidding?
Futile botox pulls
the blob holding bulging eyes
that cannot even squint
yet you insist
on incessantly
injecting In-N-Out
of your flesh
bloated and orange
like sadistic clockwork
you cannot squint
to see the truth
though you needn’t anyway
of course—
those details mean nothing
to a distracted fool.
Deviated septums
let devious streams
around their bridge
and you walk the line so well
in the night
under the street light
in the alleyway
with a five sheet
and a best mate you hardly know
repeating lines
of other times
and other other times
stubborn souls
stuck out at sea
in a shit storm of substance
and self-hatred
Who’s to help
when we’re all drowning?
Scoff scoff scoff
said the fourth little piggy
spitting with each syllable
the waste of their prey
a wasted life
I say
born in a box
“lived” in a box
died in a box
ain’t that a waste of a life
no growth or dreams
no chance of life
just death for the sake
of someone higher
such a shame,
I’d say.
© H. R. Sinclair 2025
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|
Beautiful Beautiful work my people
Amazing collection! Phillip! You got me good. Samantha, so did you. And Maggie! And I guess everyone haha 😆