Breakfast for Mia
by Madison Frazier
In the pantry,
by sugar and salt,
keep a jar
of live ants.
Like black pepper,
sprinkle them
into your eggs
and gravy.
With each forkful,
they’ll bite your lips
and tongue
and throat.
Feel them chew
off pieces of you—
your fat—from inside
and carry them
out of your stomach,
and back to their
queen, until you are
thin.
Madison Frazier currently attends the University of South Florida’s MFA program as a poet. She is interested in writing illness narratives, particularly illness narratives about the female body. She can be found eating ice cream or hanging with her dog, Dolores. She can be contacted through her website, madisonfrazier.com.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Breakfast for Mia”? When I wrote the first draft of this poem I was going through a “form follows function” experimental phase. I was obsessed with writing poems where the shape of the poem on the page was just as meaningful as the line breaks, or even the words. So, after I wrote the first draft, I decided I needed to make the poem’s shape on the page marry the function of the poem. I wanted it to look like ants were physically walking back to their queen. In order to do that, I needed lean lines, physically short and tiny words, and I needed the poem to look thin.
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Submissions
Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.
Upcoming
05/04 • Leath Tonino
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