This is What I Know of Filth is a response to Oklahoma Senator Tom Woods’ response to a constituent asking what would be done about the bullying that led to Nex Benedict’s death: “I represent a constituency that doesn’t want that filth in Oklahoma.” The poem is to be printed double-sided and flipped vertically, or held up to a mirror, to read the endnote.
Merrick Sloane is a neuro-Queer 90’s kid and nonbinary poet, editor, and researcher from Oklahoma who’s a fan of expletives and second languages. They hold an MFA in poetry from University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Merrick’s work has appeared in The Central Dissent: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality, BLEACH!, citizen trans* {project}, and is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol and Arcana Poetry Press’s Roots & Ruin anthology. In 2025, Merrick’s poetry was selected as a winner of the Garden Party Collective’s Neurodivergent / Intersectional contest and the AWP Intro Journal Awards. Merrick writes so that others may feel radically loved.
i. pre-diagnosis, or, before and ii. post-diagnosis, or, (after)
i. pre-diagnosis, or, before
the panic attacks and overflowing just-in-case bag the driving home on the way to dinner dates because i’m curling up inside every meal you made that i couldn’t eat they all told me: you’re a burden you’re too much you leave exhaustion in your wake even your tears fall in selfish punches. so i did the things. i went to the sessions. billed our insurance. kept a journal. i told myself it was a matter of rewiring and replacing, tinkering bits of machinery into the correct gear, and you know what? i did it, mostly. i poured my cloudbursts into charts and endured a seat at the dinner party and bought flowers from the grocery store like i could invent my own omens. i put sunflower stems in a vase and thought: i can turn towards the sun again. i can make use of its warmth. but then (and didn’t i always tell myself there would be a but, a however, a contradiction) here is the proof i didn’t fix myself fast enough. here is the exhaustion, the sunken spots, the brokenness that bears my signature. here is how hard i tried and here is how it wasn’t enough. a waste. all this time. every therapy session and breathing exercise and slow release capsule only got me closer to the real lie, set free from beneath the paperweight: i am a burden and you are not free of me. an unrequited impasse. i tried building a home and ended up with tombs of empty cocoons. i cannot tell you how many times i’ve hatched.
ii. post-diagnosis, or, (after)
so: it turns out sunflowers don’t move to follow the sun. not all caterpillars turn into butterflies. classic case of correlation and causation– if x and y increase simultaneously, sometimes it’s just because your brain has more red wires to defuse and apparently that’s okay. there’s a name for it, even, six entire letters and a real, honest-to-god dsm-5 entry printed in permanent ink. i never thought i’d be able to study myself in a manual. point to a diagram and say look, this part was never really broken. there’s no cure, and the news saves me because it means i wasn’t greedy with blood or sweat or tears. i was trying to buy out my burden with a false currency, thought i could trade trying for a smaller footprint. here, finally (after a childhood of waiting rooms, a thirty year trail of bitten thumbs and clipboards and prescription slips) is a truth that fits. i say no to loud restaurants and don’t swallow xanax to fall asleep. i ask if we can leave the party early and it’s a reasonable request. i eat the same meal five days a week and i’m a fucking nutrition champion, picking at plain pancakes and one spoonful of peanut butter because i’m allowed to name my own nectar. now, bending the rules isn’t cheating. joy doesn’t depend on change. did you know you can have an exoskeleton and wings at the same time? did you know there are even more things you are allowed to be?
Alexis Deese-Smith (she/her) is an emerging writer interested in navigating neurodivergence by building and bending spaces in which her autistic self might feel at home. Originally from sunny South Carolina, she now lives in Canterbury, England, where she enjoys a gluttonous amount of cream teas. She was a runner-up for The Classical Association’s inaugural poetry competition and has been listed as an Honorable Mention by Plentitude’s Prizes in Nonfiction, shortlisted for The Poetry Society Free Verse competition, and named a finalist in Frontier’s Misfits Poetry Prize. Find her on Instagram at @alexisdspoetry.
On a headline beginning “RFK Jr. bombarded Bill Nye with autism texts”
One, I’ve also tried and failed to express something deeply internal. Two, I’ve heard what Bill said about you, but about myself: “And he started again, so I cut him off.” And three, I am also overtaken by flights of fantasy when I hear the word mercury. Planetary alignments, strange coincidences. I do love a multi-meaning word, a mercurial word. In conspiracy, for example, it represents death, impurity, the little silver theodicy of evil in the vaccine. And in astrology, it is an immutable personality. I don’t care for that, but perhaps you appreciate it more than I do.
But in alchemy, the study of everything being the same and the futile quest to show it to the world? I am transfixed by the word mercury just like you. How the tender slivers slink up my nervous system like bugs: This substance contains mercury. It has life-altering transformative power.
and that is three similarities between us, as kindly as I can put them. I am not looking for feedback regarding empathy at this time.
Hy Libre is a poetess, game designer, and trans gal born in Tucson. She’s currently working on a thesis on the poetics of distortion, and she’s interested in rhetoric, logic, sound, play, time, and the failure of empathy. Find her at lightsforcats.com.
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