POSTS

Green Fuses/Halcyon

 

Leslie Benigni is a recent MFA graduate of Bowling Green State University where she was also a staff fiction editor of the Mid-American Review. Her work has been published in *82 Review, OvergroundUnderground, Goat’s Milk Magazine, Not Deer Magazine, Analogies and Allegories Magazine, Quibble Journal, and more. She currently resides in Pittsburgh, haunting art museums, looking for new inspiration in the antiquated. Find her on Instagram and Twitter, as well as her website: lesliebenigni.weebly.com.

 

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Field Notes

There are universal methods for training compliance,
to eradicate another’s sense of self
and self–control.

In the 1950s,
a social scientist named Albert Biderman interviewed returned prisoners of the Korean war
to determine why US soldiers had defected.

His government was gravely concerned.

They believed communists had developed the ability to brainwash.

Their men’s actions did not make sense to them.

They informed on fellow captives,
gave false confessions,
broadcast live against their countrymen.

Despite reports of cruelty in the camps,
upon release,
many soldiers left for China,
denouncing their former lives for those who’d been their torturers.

What Biderman found,
however,
was not mind–control but a world–wide system of inciting submission.

He organised his research into Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,
identifying 8 categories of human behaviours.

8 categories which induced dependency,
debility,
and dread.

When linked,
he said,
these actions could break anyone.

Physical violence was not “a necessary nor particularly effective method” in controlling
one’s targets or maintaining devotion.

It was not violence but the fear of violence
which made them serve.

General Method	Effects (Purposes)	Variants
1. Isolation	Deprives victim of social support and their ability to resist. Victim develops an intense concern with self as a means of survival. Makes the victim dependent upon their captor.	Although the cliché is that power corrupts, The truth is that power reveals. The first day you tested me was the first day we had keys.
2. Monopolisation of Perception	Fixes the victim’s attention upon immediate predicament. Fosters introspection. Eliminates stimuli competing with those controlled by the captor. Frustrates all action not consistent with compliance.	Like windchimes before we hang them and the trees remember to quake, Like like to the word likening when there’s nothing left to compare it to.
3. Induced Debilitation and Exhaustion	Weakens victim’s mental and physical ability to think, to reason, to resist.	Never ask if I grew up without an eyelash, Whether I’m washing my face with microbeads, If I sound pretentious when I ask waiters for meals without fries. How wearisome to hold to one’s consciousness like a favourite coat fluttering mortality in a storm flap. How wearing to ask you to stay.
4. Threats	Threats need only be veiled or implied to cultivate anxiety and despair.	In 20 years from now there will be more female serial killers than men and they’ll target friends and family if you don’t behave yourself then I won’t be a part of this family I’m kidding you’re kidding me I saw a bus walking home and almost threw myself beneath it I know that I’m a narcissist but I might be a psychopath you have no idea what you’ve done to me I have no idea what I could do if you were threated if you threatened me in just the right way.
5. Occasional Indulgences	Provides positive motivation for the victim’s compliance. Hinders adjustment to deprivation. Will cause a spike of dopamine at the release of threatening conditions. Stress and release become addictive over time.	I was so relieved when you touched me at the park, in front of our friends and family, when you had not looked me in the eyes for days— —when you remember your keys —when you lock up —when you open the door
6. Demonstrating “Omnipotence” and “Omniscience”	Suggests futility of the victim’s resistance. Positions the captor’s opinions, thoughts, and reality as superior to the victim’s own.	—But I never look anyone in the eyes why would I have looked you in the eye why would you look at me? Look at me.
7. Degradation	Makes cost of the victim’s resistance more damaging to self-esteem than capitulation. Reduces the victim to “animal level” concerns.	LovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovLovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovLovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovLovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovLovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovLovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove
8. Enforcing Trivial Demands	Re-establishes the captor’s needs as central to the victim’s routine. Drains energy. Demands a constant focus. Changes goal-posts. Creates a relentless question—But you grew up with this too didn’t you this is your voice and your abusers’ and when their voices come first how can you tell where his ends and where you begin where she ends where he ends and where they begin how can you tell which self is the one which means to hurt you if you deserved it if you asked for it if you liked it if you did this all to yourself?	Lay your tables counterclockwise, Set your orchids out of season, Stop verbalising this poem you write to get clean. Then lay your head against your mattress, For as long as night lays its head against shipwrecks underwater. Your thousand ghosts are not worth spilling to the dark.1

---

¹ The following chart is adapted from Biderman’s Chart of Coercion, also called Biderman’s Principles, published by Amnesty International in 1973. Denoting the universal tools of torture and coercion, my “Effects (Purposes)” column has been lifted almost verbatim from this document. Diana Russell, Judith Herman, Jess Hill, and other feminist scholars have since noted the similarities of these methods to the patterns of domestic abusers. The only difference they found was that, unlike soldiers or kidnappers, abusive people perpetuate these actions without being trained.

 

Alyson Kissner is a Canadian-born poet completing her doctorate in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. In 2022, Alyson was co-winner of the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for Scottish-based poets under 30, as well as shortlisted for the Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Women Poets’ Prize. Her writing has appeared in various journals including The Rumpus and Frontier Poetry, with work forthcoming in Anthropocene and Longleaf Review. She can be found on Twitter @alykissner.

 

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Tonight, I might commit the most grievous crime

(with a line from J.K Anowe)

he comes home tonight // with a bottle of Campari // a ripe disaster // nothing is better than a tavern // sprouting in the // mouth of a sot. //  which is to say,  father bellies an // alcove of all world’s booze. // once he thrashed mother // & she almost blanked out. // approach & dissect my grief & perform autopsies // —see how much damage it has done to my heart //  like a rust // chewing on the body of a metal.  // & again, my mother is a poem tonight // where the stanzas // become slurred by the cruel cadences of pummelling // & God!  i am the sad little audience to enjoy this frenzied fracas.  // call me a marigold // wilting from the sprinkling of angst // that gushes out every night from // the eyeballs of my mother. // at the exit of laughter // what else does a body perform // if not that it metaphors itself a riot against the soul? // which is to say this body balks over bliss // like a child deserting a musty doll // i want to break the foot of every shadow of him in this // room, blemish every inch of him with bruise // & let all the knives in the kitchen i hoist on his body witness his annihilation // the same way a bushfire watch //  a butterfly // reduce to ashes. // & my voice lacks remorse // like a snake depositing venom in a farmer’s leg.                   

 

Maybe, We Can Dance Once Again

after all the threnodies // these voices once twanged. // what spilled on the asphalt // last night? // the crimson of another boy // whose dreadlocks & Dior spectacles // threw a striking resemblance, // a reflection of cybercrime. // & often i am eclipsed in wonder // how somebody’s sartorial elegance // could be mistaken for iniquity // & bullets are always in anxiety // for the miracle of body baptism. // in the atrium of my heart // i found two tender songbirds // chirping unsung melodies // & before the night spilled over the roof // a curlicue of funereal crows stuffed with elegies // displaced their bodies. // who else dies again today—a boy, a grief-stricken child at the breasts of its war- ridden mother, the joy of a girl // limping home to brim her father’s soul // with a tale of rape. // a nightmare invaded my sleep // i saw my country morph into a wounded wolf // every howl of her for help // disembarked with a note of naught // until she whittled into oblivion. // here i offer // a spotless lamb // a dove // burnt incense // 12 sujuds // O Lord, take these as a sacrifice.                

 

Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arówólò is a Nigerian writer and a member of the Frontiers Collective. A Pushcart nominee, his works have appeared—or are forthcoming—in 4faced Liar, Fourth River Review, Rulerless, Perhappened, Lumiere Review, Temz Review, ANMLY, Tint Journal, Ake Review, Sunlight Press, Kissing Dynamite, Brittle Paper, Ice Floe Press, Afritondo, Better than Starbucks, and elsewhere. Currently, James Baldwin is his most-cherished essayist. Say hi to him on Twitter @eniola_abdulroq.

 

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Mereo-Logical Cybernetics

I am a cybernetic vector ↠ 
towing this domain (and it’s orbit)
about my immovable centrality.

Bounded polytopes, (deceitfully [inert]),
clutch their geometry,
announce their vertices,
in a topology of laminated pigments,

and my [sensor arrays]
ping ↺ echo ↻ ping ↺ echo ↻
in sensorimotor feedback loops.   

This ambient plenum
which embeds my extension
into non-Euclidean manifold
warped by depth and volume. 

Where forms update their evolutions
& stitch memories
into the groove of the substrate… 

But at each iteration
the output is always
[nil]** [nil] ** [nil]

 

Hiyoowi Hamainza is an emerging poet who resides in Cape Town, currently working on his debut novel. He has a poem previously published in ANMLY. He works as an English editor, studying psychology and philosophy part-time.

 

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Nan Goldin – Greer in a Babydoll Dress, NYC (1981)

[Greer as bouquet¹. Greer levitating. Greer as rice grain². Greer with measuring tape³. Greer as ghoul⁴. Greer as Sissy⁵. Greer with a pin in her chest⁶. Greer as studio⁷. Greer modeling jewelry for Einsteins⁸. Greer in bed⁹. Greer posing nude for her friends¹⁰. Greer in open-mouthed laughter¹¹. Greer getting hitched. Greer getting high¹². Greer giving side-eye. Greer opening Sissy’s torso¹³. Greer dressing Divine¹⁴. Greer flirting with Candy Darling¹⁵. Greer smoking with Teri Toye¹⁶. Greer blotting her lips. Greer papering her skull. Greer swallowing knives¹⁷. Greer with a light in her chest. Greer with birthday cake¹⁸. Greer with pointy red nails¹⁹. Greer in a veil. Greer looking away. Greer as bruise²⁰. Greer as pretzel²¹. Greer in Greer suit²². Greer taking a bubble bath²³. Greer tucking Sissy in. Greer with wires for ribs²⁴. Greer hanging her dermis like pantyhose²⁵. Greer in stitches²⁶. Greer giving the finger²⁷. Greer ascending.]

---

¹  ^{The artist Greer Lankton once told Nan Goldin she gave birth to herself in a dream.}

²  ^{After art school, Greer lived in Nan’s loft, where she made dolls and met her husband, Paul. Six years before Nan photographed their wedding, she took this photo.}

³  ^{Among Lankton’s notes: I was born April 21 1958 at 1:09am in Flint Michigan at McLaren General Hospital, I was 6lb 13 oz, 19” long, 13 ½” head circumference, 13” chest. At 8:00am on August 14th 1978 I had sex-reassignment surgery by Dr. Richard Murray in Youngstown Hospital Southside Unity, Youngstown, Ohio. I was 5’8” and weighed 130 lbs.}

⁴  ^{Preferring a daughter to a sissy son, her parents paid for the operation with help from their church, where her father was a minister.} 

⁵  ^{Sissy was the doll Greer cut open most. Like Greer, she had the operation. Like Greer, she had a tiny waist and a red heart painted on her chest. Like Greer’s, all her teeth were human.} 

⁶ ^{You don’t forget that you used to be a boy. (Lankton)}

⁷ ^{Goldin called The Ballad of Sexual Dependency “the diary I let people read. It enables me to remember.”}

⁸ ^{After AIDS in the 80s, Goldin said, “I lost everybody who carried my history.}

⁹ ^{At 38, Lankton wrote: I’ve been in therapy since 18 months old, started drugs at 12 was diagnosed as schizophrenic at 19, started hormones the week after I quit Thorazine got my dick inverted at 21, kicked Heroin 6 years ago. Have been Anorexic since 19 and plan to continue. A few months later, she overdosed.}

¹⁰ ^{“Greer had few protective devices or defenses from the world.” (Goldin)}

¹¹ ^{When Rilke writes of childhood dolls, he places them somewhere between ourselves and the amorphous world pouring into us.}

¹² ^{After her own overdose, Goldin called opioids “a padding between you and the world.”}

¹³ ^{Lankton was known to wear doll flesh around town like a great soft shell.}

¹⁴ ^{The dolls’ skins and names were always changing. Arms and wigs on the floor. Their insides varied: glass eyes, foam guts and nylon tendons, steel joints and plastic elbows. Sometimes a drop of blood from Greer—kindred.}

¹⁵ ^{Those Coke bottle hips.}

¹⁶ ^{Those coat hanger cheek bones.}

¹⁷ ^{Goldin said Lankton’s work was like surgery without anesthesia.}

¹⁸ ^{Body as art: Lankton made plaster casts of her friends’ bellybuttons. “She had a fascination with them,” Goldin said, “as a symbol of the source of life.”}

¹⁹ ^{Her own she recarved directly into her skin.}

²⁰ ^{Goldin: “Supposedly, the brain can’t tell the difference between emotional pain and physical pain.”}

²¹ ^{Without anesthesia, you’d remember everything.}

²² ^{Body as red herring: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency contains over 700 snapshot portraits. “I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough,” Goldin wrote.}

²³ ^{Right before she died, Lankton washed Sissy’s face and hung her in the closet.}

²⁴ ^{Her first self was small—a split clothesline she twisted into a doll.}

²⁵ ^{So in the end we really destroyed you, doll-soul. (Rilke)}

²⁶ ^{For her last show, she wrote: FUCK Recovery, FUCK PSYCHIATRY}

²⁷ ^{Fuck it all because I’m over it. Over the roof.}

 

Rochelle Hurt is a poet and essayist. She is the author of three poetry collections: The J Girls: A Reality Show (Indiana University Press, 2022), which won the Blue Light Books Prize from Indiana Review; In Which I Play the Runaway (Barrow Street, 2016), which won the Barrow Street Poetry Prize; and The Rusted City: A Novel in Poems (White Pine, 2014). Her work has been included in Poetry magazine and the Best New Poets anthology. She lives in Orlando and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Central Florida. 

 

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John Wayne Carrying A Baby

pretty boy,          i can’t be 
               your swollen cow       you won’t touch 
my belly but to plug
               the gunshot        i’m a different 
kind of man—a woman, of rib

giant plastic cactus         my pregnant 
               stomach              the yip 
of my dog           hurt paw           clean bed
             my partner’s partner plays 
the harmonica         poorly, slowly

             in my negligee, the baby kicks
violence in the xbox      my mom while pregnant
             felt like John Wayne
i felt like a tired fool in her womb—
              violent like an egg
bandana dirty

               the first time i wore a skirt
i was told give us a spin                he pushed
                                 a spoon into my mouth, 
               sent me to the bus
to be spanked in accessible seating
               while off-duty historical
reenactors snapped photos 
               it was humiliating           i loved it
i’m stuck
               on true imagination, attack horses,
what it feels like to give

                 your body a body

these days i’m crying
               at tender graffiti, wondering 
about the fears                 of my grandfather’s
                            childhood best friend
                waking at night he checks 
under the bed swearing                 he felt a kick

i feel like a globe with no land
               like a mother in danger
my baby              will look
              nothing like me

 

I Am Not A Woman Today

Today I am an  ailing       femboy              with an orange 
               cough    waiting               for God to spit 
                               rain into my car wash

Hawks at dawn abscond 
              toward a bluer freedom                A lonely flagpole slaps 
its own thigh                    My thrifted pants are too tight & I’m angry 
                at the weather                   All sun, no cream

The Virgin Mary                           statue in the Catholic suburb               of the cemetery
               toppled in the storm                                                            Lifting with our knees
Pam and I can’t budge it                                       We place the snapped head 
               tenderly             near the neck
I pray like I’m hiding                   a frog from the class

             When I forget to say thank you                 the gas station attendant puts 
out a cigarette             on her arm          The burn forms an image of Christ 
                            if Christ looked like nothing

Let’s say what we feel like            I’ll go first:       I feel like a puppet 
              with a wet bulge                           like I’m helplessly watching
a golf cart die                  in a sinkhole                  I can’t love right
              I’ve got all this leg hair               and small tits 
                             A lousy milk cow           A buffet              of coleslaw

I dreamt I found my lost rings
                You were there forgiving
me like a mirror rehearsal
                             I sobbed in your arms
               and said I just want to be happy
but those are your words—You gave the dog her pill
                            and rubbed my neck       until it went down
Of course          I worry               I won’t wake up                I always do

 

Isa Pickett (she/they) is a trans writer, musician, and educator. Her work has appeared in Five South, Philadelphia Stories, and is forthcoming in The Bitchin’ Kitsch. Their work has been nominated for Best of the Net and made the long list for Frontier Poetry’s Award for New Poets. She lives in Philadelphia. Follow them on Instagram @isapickett_ or Twitter @pickett_isa.

 

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Mourning Meditations

after Cameron Awkward-Rich

I wake up to the rubble & ruin of broken hearts, another day of pandemic & aftermath – my gut sinks. I stay inside my bed a little longer & check my phone – my gut sinks. I lift up my comforter, lift up my morning body, walk to the bathroom & sit on the toilet – my guts sink. I contemplate my rebellious body, my only religion. My gut sinks. I gaze longingly out the window – I see a fence. There is a dream I have in which every cage melts. I gather carbon dioxide in the air like it is pollen or nectar & I am a hummingbird or a bee & I feed it back to the Earth. There are no borders, just flora. I sigh & swat the stupid toilet paper roll. Hand on my stupid guts. Hand on my shit-lipped hole.        

“Mourning Meditations” is written after Cameron Awkward-Rich’s poem “Meditations in an Emergency”, itself an “after poem” written after Frank O’Hara.

 

Aerik Francis is a Queer Black & Latinx poet and teaching artist based in Denver, Colorado, USA. They are the author of BODYELECTRONIC, their debut poetry chapbook now out with Trouble Department press. They have poetry published widely, links of which may be found at linktr.ee/Aerik or via their website phaentompoet.com.

 

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Warscapes

This return is a wilted and brown lemon rind–the deafening 
memory of how I have evaded one war after another. 

A slow crumbling evening, and  beneath a billboard
where starlets pose as obedient daughters to army generals, 

I imagine: what it means to try to shut one’s eyelids
while being bombarded by something as simple as street lights.

I suck a copper coin, my tongue numb and cold
against the metal. The city’s rickshaws honk

breath across my knees. 
On the pavements, rickety little girls learn to play with their fingers

touch the aroma of the coffee-cup along the glass walls, commit 
to memory. Commit to memory the fact that walls can shine

from inside, that walls can invite one in, without offering
anything real to eat–this city, indeed, 

is an exercise in staring. 

When chased away, the girls leave behind–the hint
of grease, the imprint of their nose–tips 

on the irreproachable glass. Do not worry. That 
slight etching, too, would soon be wiped away– 

the teenager who would perform 
the act of erasure, has lost 

his village to a legislative burial. 
Before stepping into our city, 

his tongue was a stranger 
to the taste of coffee. 

 

Nandini Dhar is the author of the book Historians of Redundant Moments (Agape Editions, 2017). Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in New England Review, Epiphany, Fugue, diode, Memorious, New South, Best New Poets 2016, and elsewhere. She teaches literature and gender studies at OP Jindal Global University, India, edits the bi-lingual journal Aainanagar, and divides her time between Delhi, the national capital of India and Kolkata, her hometown.

 

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moon.sun

First there was the moon. Almost like I could touch her just out of reach. Sometimes I felt like I could do anything. Did you ever howl at the moon did you ever show her your self your full Self did you ever surrender to her? She knows. She listened. In the night she watched me nurtured me like a mother her child she took care of me she kept me safe. And how she kissed my nose and cheeks and the crook of my neck and my collarbones my breasts the knuckles on my fingers my hips and feet and knees. I stood. I stood. I kneeled. And got up. She likes when I look up at her but she hates being above me. Always out of reach and just close enough to never touch but I swear she is here. In the way I drink her in. And how she wanes. And is gone. But she will. Come back, she always comes back for me I don’t need to ask where she’s been for when I stand beneath her cold white light I am safe forever and there is no past and there is no future and I am hers. 

Then there was the sun. He comes between. And burns. My skin he touches. Glowing hands. He breaks you down. Forces. How you like it. He is far away when I can look him in the eye but so close when above dizzying he is all encompassing and I cannot stand I always fall into. Red on my body where he touches the burn on my skin forever. Yes. And sometimes hiding for days he doesn’t show. Himself like a ghost but they say he is always there even when I can’t see him I can not take it sun burn me again for the absence of pain is the absence of. You. Desire. Please but. Stay longer sun you are so bright you are everything the world kneels before you you. Need you. Stay forever but he’s going again but what a spectacle he leaves. Purple and orange and red like sun-kissed skin. He always comes back for me I don’t need to ask where he’s been for when I kneel beneath his fiery hands I am small and there is no past and there is no future and I am his.

The moon stands high on the horizon, quiet. 

 

diary #1: self

Dear diary the other
day i said people
online aren’t real because
it’s the same thoughts and feelings and words
overagainandagainoversaturatedagain
and then i went
and pretended i didn’t. so maybe
i’m not real because
i keep coming back for
more but diary we already know
i have a problem. with
substance because i mean the things i say
but that’s about it really

i say i’m a nihilist because i’ve
gotten used to saying so but i
really am searching for meaning
in the forest song about the witch and the changing of my bedsheets
and the five letters when i cum and how i end things
without changing. how
i let them in and out of my life
in and out in and fuck. out
like how i keep objectifying myself and
how i write in blue ink although blood is
supposed to be red.

I guess there’s meaning in my falling
canvas hearts and blood baths in the way
i’m calm and loving but if you’ve ever
heard a pig screaming
on their way to slaughter then i’m afraid
you know the deepest parts of me
and you’re braver than i am because
i haven’t been there in at least 162 days but
anyway what a shame
the machine keeps on going
like the pulsing under my skin and the ocean rain

 

j. kleinschmidt is a writer and university student. In their writing, they draw from their experience as a queer person growing up on the internet to explore the spaces between love and obsession, desire and pain, and the occasional love letter to the moon. Follow them on Instagram @dancing.sirens.

 

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This Too is a Poem is a Prayer, Unclasping

over the crest of memory:

O gold-rimmed matzo: tremble.
O teeth; stigmata—

then I peel the hard-boiled egg of my own grief.
& what is life but a breaking in

                    someone’s hands?

Somewhere 
                   fireflies limn the shore of 
his limbs celestine. I rend as I remember 
I no longer god-walk this sea. 

                          Nor rest the weary hind legs of 
a kiss by his ear, 

                           breath unbridled 

from the silt-slippery conch-shell of my body:
                                   listen. Hold me and listen 
to an ocean 
                                                   thrashing—

How to wring myself out of this washcloth of remembrance? 
I have sopped up the last of his gravy. I am

                            stained      by his laugh.
On my skin on his skin.

& what is love but a seeping in

of sorts?

A running under water, 

                    a gentle rub, 

                                                a squeeze,

a laying out?

Originally appeared in Tigers Zine.

 

Letitia Jiju is an Indian poet who through her work explores the intermingling of mother tongue, religion & generational trauma. Her poems have appeared/are forthcoming in trampset, ANMLY, The Lumiere Review, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She reads poetry for Psaltery & Lyre. Find her on Instagram/Twitter @eaturlettuce.

 

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