my mouth bore wasps in my sleep
they all died, sunken, shriveled, 
and prostrate to gods they never imagined themselves
I could feel every single tarsus
drag along my lips before flight
it was the fire I spoke in my trance
the terror of REM sleep’s gateway
I would scream anxieties and bite the night
all my progenies, six-four-or-two-legged
faced death before they knew life
tongues I spewed forth in the gloaming
arrived from other planes of existence
and shouted the destructions of fallacies 
the gospel of extinction
some nights, I would awake
swarmed by my offspring, clouded in a fear
not for my own safety or theirs, but
for the notion of existence itself

​

I could choke on the void, yet
not the forthcoming stream of wings from my gaping maw
headed with a fury towards death
and I will drown in the hollowed husks
of my nightmarish kind
 

Gabe Bogart is a writer from Seattle, Washington. He's recently had work featured at Corvus Review, Fahmidan Journal, and maxsportingstudio.com. Follow him on Twitter for pithy snark and baseball banter.