The music box was made of bullets in a defy-laws-of-physical way. Whenever I heard a gunshot my dad would say, “oh that’s just your sister playing her music box.” I don’t have a sister and the music box is made of thunder and fingernails. I miss my tongue. It’s cutting itself on the rim of a soda can. I drink carbon like water. I catch bullets like wasps. I use duct tape on the hole in the wall of the submarine. The water is coming. The water is already here.
Debris
Outside today I came upon a dead deer. It was crumpled like the rubble of an old house. What was the last thing you saw dismantled? A question is a way of telling the reader “I want to implicate you in this poem.” Sometimes, a man selling guns comes to my door and tells me I need protection. I can’t tell if he’s threatening me. If he is then I will need to buy a gun from him. A sign hums on a porch and it says “It takes an average of 22 minutes for 911 to respond to a call. It takes an average of 13 seconds for me to fire my gun.” The sign is afraid. Forgive me for my realism, music box. I only wanted to tell a fairy story and here we are in American again.
Perpendicular
The crystal shop is selling ammunition now. Bullets made of jade. Bullets made of sapphire. Bullets made of bone. Elk bone. Deer bone. Alligator bone. Some of these are not practical but a bullet’s job has never about practicality. The bullet is an instrument for puncture. How will you get to the other side of a canvas of flesh? Whose name will appear written into your skin when you wake up from from your last hallucination?
Robin Gow is a trans poet and young adult author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books 2020) and the chapbook Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press 2019). Their first young adult novel, A Million Quiet Revolutions is forthcoming March 2022 with FSG Books for Young Readers. Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, Southampton Review, and Yemassee. They live in Allentown Pennsylvania with their queer family and two pug dogs and work at Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center. Check out what they’re up to at robingow.com.
Antithetical, all in, I was hoping we’d go swimming. When I think of your body water, more than a raindrop, less than the sea, I find the opposite of floating. Still, there is a buoyancy about you that makes me want to duck. But I will try not to. This is all I have to offer, the trying. So that maybe we can end up with our stomachs exposed. One day, I’ll turn to you and show you my sunburn and you’ll say how beautiful.
Nora Rose Tomas is a queer writer based in New York City. They are about to receive their MFA from Columbia University, where they concentrated in nonfiction writing. Their writing has appeared in Lavender Review, Mantis, Small Orange, and What are Birds? among others. They are currently working on a book about sensations. You can follow them on Instagram @dr_sappho.
i. in winter i will unravel to invite your fingers on the back of my knee and the skin behind my ear. cocoon my body with quivering teethtell me where you want mine. i’ll bite tenderly and leave crescent residue. drizzle me in sticky delusion. i want to feel capable of intimacy. wait. let me try again. trace a portrait on my leg with your jellyfish touch. fill me with wayward laughter. maybe i want to master the contour of your ear to be close to anyone except god. my sun-dried skin drapes over my skeleton. your bones won’t chime against mine. our rooms won’t echo back this connection.
ii. my room echoes back my imperfections. i catalogue my oddly formed joints (weak knuckles and knees and ankles). they are not meant to hold me together. gills conquer my neck. borrowed limbs settle into an arranged wreckage. i collapse gently. become a monstrous metamorphosis. make a home of an aquarium.
this is what i think when you ask to hold me. i am the marine exhibit in your fishbowl embrace. command me to imagine new am[phi]bitions for water so i can build a body worthy of habitation to purge my prehistoric form. i make a fine spectacle for you to witness.
iii. the underwater acrobat is a fine spectacle adorned in seafoam and nautilus shells. i tendril the sunken anchor. pirouette about its rusted body. the shimmering scales of my torso costume my discomfort. desire is an act i perform well.
i don’t know how to let you hold me so i invent new tricks. name myself neptune. cleave the water to cluster your attention. crawl across the ocean floor in front of an unblinking chorus. drink the moonlight with me.
the clownfish pity me. their mouths open in silent applause. or protest. i imagine they will grow bored of me soon.
iv. i imagine you will grow bored of me and watch me wither when i fail to learn my body is natural.
i’m sorry. i’m better at being alone.
i’d like to be something precious to you one day. crack my calcified husk and kiss the softshell skin between my shoulderblades.
please be patient. i’m trying to sponge for you.
your gilded tongue on my hip warms my skin moving against the cool ceramic of your bathtub.
v. the pearly water in our ceramic bathtub ripples. you croon into my scalp. comb my hair. laugh at the uneasy croak in my throat.
i have nothing clever to say sitting between your dimpled knees i imagine them in crooked flight and your hands fishhooking the sheets. i cross the silken cold to tangle my fingers in your necklace. smooth your velvet brow. revel in your lighthouse gaze under the bruise-blue ceiling.
i’d like to thumb your eyelids to understand the way you look at me. i want to enjoy it. i am waiting for something to earn.
vi. i am still waiting for something to earn. i list everything wrong with me. my hands are too cold. my stomach puddles when i lie on my side. i hoard pillows and pleasure.
forgive my tense muscles. i’m not used to being touched.the last person who loved me hadn’t figured out how to yet. i am new at this.
i hide from you quite often. make myself small in body and feeling. cover your eyes when i cum. watch sleep cradle you beside me before i melt into the sheets.
there is no time that i allow you to see me.
vii. there is no time i allow you to see me. aquatic ambiguity ornaments my body. obscurity coats surprise drowns my dread floods my mouth from which my shame trickles.
i know the way you look at my fossilized skin. a modern relic of decay. i do not remember a time when i looked natural. alive instead of petrified. fluid instead of jagged.
i wake beside you with newly formed scars illuminating my joints. this is its attempt to pull a yearning from the murky depths of me. an urchin clumsily grasping at tenderness.
viii. i am an urchin clumsily biting at tenderness. my spines converge at the point of touch. this is [in]voluntary. a defense mechanism. i do not pretend to be soft. capable. vulnerable. i know i cannot be touched. when unchecked urchins devastate their habitat.
do not misunderstand. i am not trying to do this here.
i nestle into the dim corners of the room waiting to be discovered by you. i want to be a desirable thing but unraveling is not easy for me. i hide my discomfort by pretending i can soften or twist.
i’m trying to find an honest word to say to you.
ix. i’m trying to find an honest word to say to you. to be worthy of what you invest into me. you noticed my shoulders have become sharper this year. i am a marionette with locking joints and a clicking jaw. i wonder what you see when you look at me. what do you think of the venom i harbor in my heart? underneath my exoskeleton. satin spine beneath coral. the wetness below your tongue makes me feel warm-blooded. your dew-laced breath on the back of my neck unblurs my eyes.
i want to be wrapped around you without fear of us shattering. i try to imagine you touch me because you love me. or at least you’re trying. i promise i am too.
x. i promise i am trying. i struggle with words. i’ve never felt as sacred or permanent as i do when you stretch across me. i feel as if i were catapulted into the frigid air. flung into becoming. i am not beautiful but you draw a communion from within me so grand my skin thimbles. you assemble our ecosystem. i talk about the ocean because i want you to envelop me. your laugh illuminates your throat. brushes against my lips. i open and blossom. i am asking for a distraction and a moment of your time. how thrilling.
xi. how thrilling to drift towards you. who welcomes my cold hands inside of you. for you i break open not apart. i only understand our time together when i lick it from between your fingers. traversing each knuckle and valley. i am praying for you to engulf me. for us to become the tide. rise together. fallgently. into one another.our glassy moans streaking the skylight. soon i will give you all of me. pour into me through each of your fingertips. i am always cold when you’re not here.
xii. i am never cold when you are here. hovering over me. your thumb on my chin as you paint my face in diligent strokes.an artist versed in my medium. i like how you see me. better than i really am. there is nothing beautiful or delicate here. only an urgency in the gathering of your hands at my temples. your rusted whispers. a warmth i am learning to swallow from the way you pull me close and our mouths collapse into a grotto.
xiii. our mouths collapse into a grotto. let me know a day when i do not camouflage into the ocean floor in your presence. you are the first person who has treated my body gently. with kindness. can you see why i want to give it to you? i spilled across a kitchen floor the first time you saw me. stumbling. my legs clumsy. both of us full on laughter. drunk. buoyant. you confess to wanting to feel [big]. i trace my fears of visibility onto your speckled arms. we do not lie. we caress in a suspended daydream.
xiv. we caress in a suspended daydream. today there is snow hiding us from the world. your godliness wanes. we move against each other under the numbed sun. burrow into the sheets. shadows flicker against the far wall. they mimic our newness. our sheltered green amuses them. i do not shrink from your grazing fingertips. i could explore your back all day. its skin like flattened embers against my frigid palms. we begin our wandering again. a helix of shivering limbs. a crescendo of watery breath. in winter i unravel to invite you in.
February Spikener (she/they) is a Black femme poet from Detroit currently residing in Massachusetts. Her work has been published in The Wellesley Review, Paper Trains Literary Journal, and So to Speak: feminist journal of language and art. Ever inspired by their loved ones, their poems reflect how they navigate through the world and what it means to love and be loved. She believes that love is and has always been the answer and that the mastery of love is a form of survival.
How much for freedom? It’s a trick question. You can never pay enough. You will always owe someone or something.
Haiti paid France $21 billion for its independence.
Puerto Rico: How much can I pay?
US: Give me your land, people, language, food, culture, and flag. Maybe then we’ll talk.
Puerto Rico: No es justo.
US: Take it or leave it.
Our dreams are free.
We run like stray horses in the mountains. No light for good luck. Who needs it anyway? When there’s no want of stars to give us lifeblood.
Sometimes, every so often, a tourist drowns behind a hotel in Condado. The ocean reclaims what it wants. Saying here is salt. Take that back in your suitcase. How cruel. How unkind. What does it come to.
*
I was taught to love water. Respect it like your blood. If blood is red, then water is nucleus red. Like ATP red.
All things comes from water. All things return to water.
Turn off the faucet. That could be your great great-grandmother there.
Is it possible to have too much water? Ask the trees. Like during hurricanes.
We should then love and fear water. How can it be both? A kiss and knuckle? Hug and slap? Push and all pull?
You’ve seen the drowning. Rivers of trees and earth.
Repeat after me. Repeat after me. Water is my first love.
Me: I ❤️you.
Water: I ❤️you too.
What comes next?
I thought you knew.
*
In the end, only water remained.
But even that was dangerous.
Look at Flint. Look at Standing Rock. Look at Puerto Rico.
What would the ancestors say?
How did we end up here?
They took our land away from us— repackaged it with manicured lawns, but kept the pillars and the names plantation and antebellum. Some gringo names that sound good when you’re showing off to the customer service representative. I live there. Took our bodies away from us— rebranded as one flashy r and b star and basketball player. We can’t all be like that. Even though many of us have dancing TikTok fantasies and think we’re Dr. J’s dunking twin. Nope. Just wounded ankles and knees.
Where are we?
It’s June. Water is coming. Let’s hope it’s not too much. We’ve been drowning since forever.
*
What you say about water is what you know.
How can too much water be a bad thing?
Isn’t it like love? Having a lot of love is good?
Ask the flowers that go rootless.
Ask the worms that get plucked by birds.
Ask the slaves wa ter wat er waaaa t er.
You don’t understand. It’s answer D on the test. All of the above.
If hurricanes could speak. Give you the 5-star treatment at the spa. Tell you the comeback story. Which everyone loves. To forget the dry run drownings.
*
How you treat water is how you treat your mother.
Treat it kindly, gently. Don’t abuse it. Don’t take it for granted. It is not going to stay up late and wait for you. Don’t let it run forever. Even water gets tired and needs a nap. Sing to it. Be sweet. Tell it how pretty it looks on a nice day. Bring it flowers just because. Not the $4.99 cheap ones from Walmart. Something from the garden. So water would say I recognize my work. Thank you very much. Take it to Splash Mountain and watch how people delight when crashing in chlorinated-with-who-knows-what wetness. Skip the museum though. There’s no need to see children slurp fountain liquid that is the wrong color. Water would demand better—How can I look like that? Where is the filter? Shakes head. Go to church instead. A sprinkle across a baby’s bald head. Time to save souls. Don’t ask and how did the church save you? To avoid any stink eyes and pops upside the head. Remember to respect water.
Respect water. Always remember. In the ocean, don’t forget about the undertows. Don’t swim too far. The currents. Teaching you how not to drown. To breathe. Not to drown. Respect. Respect is a motherfucker.
* Ask the slaves wa ter wat er waaaa t er is a reference to M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!
Dorsía Smith Silva is a Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net nominee, Obsidian Fellow, and Full Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, The Offing, The Minnesota review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She is also the author of Good Girl (poetry micro-chapbook), editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering, and the co-editor of six books. She has attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop. She has a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature and posts at @DSmithSilva.
Weatherworn dress shaped fabric wind whipped floating the breeze Echoes hung from tree limbs Faded claret cotton polyester linen cardinals Wingless beside a highway Vacant necklines with empty sleeves waving to passing cars with blank stares Bosom hugged tight Hip snug Missing a body An unkindness of ravens flying above or a murder of crows black specked diving The warm breath of a woman fills a dress slipped over her head braids falling free Warmer than brown eyes staring back Flyers nailed with a native likeness Asking Where are we Meme my wisdom Murder my flock but don’t you dare see The native cleaved from an indigenous child thrown in a schoolyard grave too many bodies high History shifting the dirt over red bodies Once we were a commercial crying over garbage thrown from cars at our feet Listen the missing and murdered still speak Howling our truth from the torn Remnants of red dresses When did I become a mile marker striding the highway across nations
Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Glass Poetry: Poets Resist, The Temz Review, Contrary, trampset, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Pioneertown Literary, Grain, The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, Gothic Blue Book Volume VI – A Krampus Carol, The Rumpus, Smoke & Mold, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, and Savant-Garde.
Cultural Experience: Enjoying Korean Fried Chicken
A treestring of chicken bones in the carton— crunching dangling cartilage clean off, they say those who fall must have wings. And then strip metacarpus, now breaking backwards, lift skein of skin off the seams. It seems now yesterday they scraped that twenty-two storey child, seen flown down the window, off these bloodglass streets. Flabby bonecrunch, same dent on the skeleton, same bird body but whose wings? Come, come with me, slide off your seat with the batter, we’ll baste these cuttered chicks. One dollop of drip glue, three full-grown plumes, seven and twenty-one streams. The carrion are here now, snaked out the doorhall, kill time for their wattled wings. They once had redwings, deadwings, lichenfernwings, diaphanous, silver, wormintheduckwings and then nothing. Nothings and nowings. Yet here they are, still putrid flesh standing in line. O, what a chain of longing.
Field Notes on Alcohol Use Disorder
i am awake our feet drag bulging calves in circles bigger than the ones before them rainsoaked sneakers and spattered thighs
or lips numb from winter wind sit me sighing by the glowing heater with dried squid and shrimp crackers in neon darkness sing bullshit belt dog noises
two-fifty won apiece the rising scent of spirits draws meat from blood and sinew comes the nightwolf paws at a past it doesn’t reach
mashes go f uck datboi huge d I ck stumblestrumblessorryambadpersonsleep hello? why aren’t you picking up? i’m waiting at gaehwa station
a woman sniffing at snapdragon buds in the dark just bloody bloom already 11 30 pm: all the lamps in the park let out the city in the distance splinking
i am still waiting at gaehwa station why am i still here? we aren’t at all going in the same direction for insensate dreams
dial ‘1’ or text don’t thi nk u’ll make it wriitng lit take cr8tvty the nightwolf thrashes a barbed melancholy in the sheets if you can’t sleep, stay awake
a woman splits open a cushion compact (Laneige, N. 21, Beige) presses puff against skin stay awake and read with me it says wolves and dogs have the same ancestors
does it matter which i say you are?
the morning is amber-yolk and cotton-orange colors bounce off the balcony a woman (the same one from before?) dips faintly into a pot of bronze shadow
you dog you fucking dogbrat
Rachel Kuanneng Lee is a poet currently developing her writing with the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program. Her work appears in or is forthcoming at wildness, carte blanche, DIALOGIST, trampset, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cotton Xenomorph, Sweet Lit, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Live Canon 2020 competition and is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. She is also co-founder of a data science startup and hopes that someday, she might be able to make a coherent narrative out of her career choices, even if today is not quite that day. You can find her online at rachel-lee.me.
Cockroaches survived, of course, together with a few humans who wore fluorescent soccer tops and commemorative sweaters proclaiming: Class of 2021, Class of 2023, Class of 2019 – the names listed as on a cenotaph.
Aidan Coleman has published three collections of poetry and his work has been shortlisted for national book awards in Australia. His poems have appeared in Best Australian Poems, Poetry Ireland Review, Glasgow Review of Books, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review among others. Aidan is an Early Career Researcher at the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide.
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