POSTS

Collapsing Ghosts

…nothing but a jump from one interaction to another…we can now observe black holes
formed by collapsed stars. Crushed by its own weight, the matter of these stars has
collapsed upon itself and disappears from our view. —Carlo Rovelli

The years’ crowded train hurtled on like a spine pulled from the flesh of a fish.
Like a Doppler field implosion

as hate words entered my skin layers at the neutral syllable speed of a black hole
god who is unseen.

Fit to be tied behind the back of feeling, a hatchet to the lock and heat of what
we emit, I began to feel

nothing, underwater, crushed by our marriage vacuum. So, exploring all limits,
the 66 seabed meters, near

oxygen toxicity from body to bed, I gave myself what I wanted him to give me.
Isn’t that the jump from one

nitrogen interaction to another, the matter of collapsing into ourselves and seen
from a shining distance?

Those who are afraid fight hardest and make a pact with ruin claims on time.
The way gravity doesn’t

exist in space––it is space before I can speak my peace entreaty to be simply
loved and loved again, like

an erotic tide’s heave returning to its demise, only to be repeated, but different
as ghost face of a star

splintered inside the wave’s white beard up there, airborne and yet without air.
Let me be clear.

I can’t think as far as the disappearing hour after faith in the unknown died.
Know too, when

electrons no longer got in the way, I was free to travel alone, praying to myself
inside the dark applause made with

one hand waving from the ledge of light’s lasting tour waveform across this
universe clatter and cluster of Bang Bang––Kiss Kiss.

 

Former Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, final judge for the PEN’s “Best of the West” award, the Kate & Kingsley Tufts Poetry Awards, and the Laurel Prize for environmental writing, Elena Karina Byrne works as a freelance editor, screenwriter, lecturer, interdisciplinary events curator, and as Programming Consultant / Poetry Stage Manager for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Pushcart Prize recipient and Best American Poetry contributor, her five poetry collections include If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn, 2021). Forthcoming works include two new poetry books and her essay collection, Voyeur Hour: Poetry Art, Film, & Desire.

GAMBLE RESPONSIBLY

Thus reads the electronic ad for the Trojan Ultra Thin value-pack. I forget to lock the bathroom door. At the park, River & I sculpt clay into untaxable beings. When I kill the beetle, it’s reborn with harder hands. To diversify my resume, I list hope as a skill. & when choosing between a rock & a hard place, I consult my throwing arm. Ecclesiastes: TIME & CHANCE HAPPEN TO THEM ALL. Solomon died at fifty-five. I wonder: are you sufficiently afraid? Someday I want a child. Monday I Google how to manifest. On the bus, a woman’s beer trickles beneath my feet. As if a body could take you that far. Written outside the bookstore: PICK UP AFTER DOG OR EAT IT! So close to the laundromat, I smell the socks screaming. IPhone Pastor reassures: IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN DO IT. I dreamt myself consorting with wealthy men to fuck a reindeer. Translation: fortune will ruin me. Post-coitus, we argue whether one person can touch another. Only after debts metastasize will the bank statements arrive. And god, now it rains. Now a man interrupts my weeping to ask: BRIDGET?

 

Cydni Thompson is a poet from Jamaica, Queens. She is entering her final year of her MFA at Queens College, and is the ’25-’26 Poetry Coalition Fellow at The Poetry Society of America. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from Poet Lore, poetry.onl, SWWIM, trampset, and elsewhere.

Me, My Half-Brother and his Dad (Who I Fuck) Get Tattoos of Each Others’ Names, All Misspelled; or, Don’t Call It A Lover’s Quarrel; or, American History, 2009-2029

So say I stab a white man
on camera.

Yo daddy been getting on my nerves.
He sent his Stephen Miller to say he’s spoiling

for a fight. If I give him what he wants,
your camera

turned on me would not be                                                                          American history.

—
America the Son shole is daddy’s baby. Got his fist.
Mama’s maybe

monster, I would never end my story in blood. But
water ain’t the only wet                                                                                 I wade.

—
Curtal, our mama curtsies | the Father’s hellish pleasures.
Now this is America

-n history: her                   dance undoing Father’s face,
limb by limb unlashing him                                                                         into hope.

—
Misprize your [country | father | monster] into hope
and he may grow golden

brown at the edges.                                                                                        Still monster.

—
If I was American History, I would flow like ink
down America

the Father’s back, shoulders, sides, trunk, ass.
Painting him                                                                                                     his name.

—
Brother if your father is a monster
call me Kaiju, curve your camera
Trust. You don’t wanna miss what                                                              comes next.

 

The Poet-Hearted King of the Jets Unprophesies His Perfect Lover Upon Lifting Her Veil And Finding No Skin, or, American History, from the 2004 Democratic National Convention to the Day of Barack Obama’s Inauguration

America don’t know it yet but that stranger
from the other side of the city will come
to be the love of your life and the death
of you or your name or something like that.

                                     it’s maybe just                         out of reach
                                      down the block,                        on a beach
                                      under a tree…

history has gotten too boring
for a country full of dreamers
violent to uninherit
what we call the violet
experience: anything that is, you too

                                    could be.                                 who knows… there’s
                                     something due                         any day
                                     I will know                                right away…

country with no shame
-faces, country clean of want, country
where the muse’s opposite bumps
and thuds underground, what will
become American history has
a warning for you:

                                     it may come cannonballing down through sky
                                     gleam in its eye
                                     bright as a rose…                    who knows…!

             nothing comes
             so swiftly
             as the one thing
             you did not
             ask God for:
             what stalks you
             in this life
             or the next
             is what
             -ever your eyes
             have seen,

could be… who knows…

             and your mind has edited
             out. cutless
             country, blood
             soaks your blind
             synapses but
             blood will find its word
             -less way to
             defile you, stain
             your smart suit.

something’s coming
I don’t know what it is but it is
for you, may even be

             the love of your life:
             a President
             not too stupid
             to keep you safe,
             to clean your hands,
             to unsin you,
             to justify and/or
             sanctify your blood
             -shed, be perfect for you,
             tell you you are who
             you always wanted
             to be

The air is humming
and something great is

growing in your disused
synapses; something slickens
in your hope-hungry heart, may be
even the love of your life.

even the love of your life
inside you too will
violet: anything that is
you too can be. you too can be

in danger. shamefaced,
project your hat and beg
for mercy from the way
love will wreck you. you

are not the king of the world.

 

Christopher Leigh Silverberg is Black, queer, churchy, theater-obsessed, writes poems, helps other people make films, and loves all these things. He is originally from Dallas, Texas and now lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. He is grateful to his teachers at Columbia University and Cave Canem. His work appears or will appear in Callaloo and FIYAH. christophersilverberg.com.

DESERVING & HUMANE

I’ve lived a charmed life. The tents                                           in corners.
The men on motorcycles. War of their chins.            War in our public
parks.
The only wild left is my own eyes. How I must
wield them. The story of Verve: a wolf sold as “husky”   slips out
of the gift
box
and into the neighbourhood. My body used to be a detector
for dry places. Now, the mouth
of Verve.
Verve prowls up the hill to a foreclosed mansion.                  Pink runts
curl like portholes no one knows to look through.                 The story
of Verve, his                    skin-breaking nip.            Every time
my
hips crack, the herd raises their heads.           It bothers you,
forgetting time is a knife to the head
or
appendages.
Someone leaves a steak on the stoop.               I’m astonished how fast
I grow. The story
of Verve is a lesson in Watch                               Your Angles.
Ana
Mendieta introduces me to bikers that will kill                         for me,
a child.            Origin of leather.               Verve sees your collar.   Verve   sees
unopened                  cans  in  the  foyer.   Verve laps dust from the puckered
jacuzzi. If I were an heir, I’d cut many
                           ribbons. Instead, are the bikers still here
are the bikers still herearethebikersstillhere?
On
the Red Line, Sir Adam beckons with a swill.
The story  of  Verve and the neighbour’s mauled lapdog.
Sir Adam confuses me    for something with sheep herding stock
or else a Sotheby’s listing.         As a man,
                            I drip everywhere I go.
Your bed, the side of your cheek, your chin. The
story
of Verve and the charity of brushing his fur and returning him to the wild.

 

What the Cadillac is For

She calls from my father’s house asking for a washcloth         I used to leave trails
of soot. Cooperation means behaviour: a black snake
in the garage     A drink        A boy under spurs        I want to admit most
to you yet I heard dignity is glass lodged in my foot and I shouldn’t loosen it lest
some unknown splash      Lest spring       Lest         She is wondering about something
to clean herself with     The drink     The boy      The cedar on the thawing bank
of the Potomac       That makes for good kindling       I want to admit everything
to you     I used to believe I lived on the tongue of the Hoover dam and I needed
to imagine an alley full of kittens with twisted necks to summon water back
through me       Her son and his souped up car       Where he takes it         Facts
feel flexible working from inside the tent She needs to keep hooking
a nail into this starved dirt    Needs to know if the bald nest or famine came
first and will I bring a washcloth       I want to worm into shapes before you
Every time I clean dishes I promise g-d I’d eat the waterlogged
scraps if it could save you from unbearable pain.      Soft tree
she cannot even start to take down        Her son’s “son” and the little night of my face

 

Bela Koschalk is a writer based in Chicago, Illinois. Their poetry has been recognized by the Poetry Society of America. They have writing featured in Narrative Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Denver Quarterly, CutBank, and elsewhere.

Body Approved for Use

Part 1

Harvesting
is life
          Harvesting is
rebirth

Tomato pea squash

You contain elements that were present
at the birth of the universe

                      A double helix                                                                                
twirling
like a celebration

                      Minerals with sense
eyes to see
ears with which to hear
an urge and design for union

The sunlight reaches for you like a child
holding out her hand
for a toy

The garden stretches across borders and time

Your place is set, the plate is full

 

Part 2

CoMpleX [digital enclosure]
cutting edge of social control

High-definition video stills
of each subject’s features.
Personal data in crisp black boxes.
The yellow square surrounding the face
indicates pre-criminal.

// LOCATION TRACE CONFIRMED //
// SCAN COMPLETE //
// THREAT LEVEL: LOW //

The parameters of the policing grid.

Faceprint stored.
Voiceprint stored.
Gaitprint stored.

The unobserved life
is transgression.
A shadow cast unmeasured,
a motion without timestamp,
expression
without category
= violation.

Flag: Quran audio file detected
Flag: Arabic text in SMS
Flag: Sudden change in route

Compliance metrics exceeded
Access revoked.

Behavior modification trial initiated.
Results pending.

There are no bad algorithms—only bad data.

 

Part 3

My life is a sequence of signals of offense.
Some long, others short.
Slowed down, magnified.
Like a code for those who are watching.
There is no trial,
only conviction
when the sum total of my behavior
adds up to a crime.

I download WhatsApp
and send prayers in Arabic to friends,
share videos of religious leaders
extolling a life devoted to God.

Study the Qur’an, grow out my beard.

We named our granddaughter Amina.

I don’t eat pork at the factory canteen,
abstain from alcohol,
drive to the mosque at dawn on weekdays,
before work.

I miss the old days of the village turning in unison
on the wheel of prayer.

We use a VPN to watch Turkish soap operas.

I’m ignorant of the laws written in secret
and obscured by authority.

There is no God but—

 

Part 4

Handcuffed, shackled, hooded.

There’s a bucket in the corner.
That’s where you shit,
                 bitch.
Baotou, baotou.

I’m beaten on my backside by a cane
1.5 meters in length.
            Forced to sit all day on a plastic stool.
                       Straight as the cane.
They push it into our backs,
                            strike our heads.
              Don’t speak.
Your language is the enemy.
Baotou, baotou, bitch.
Head like a pig.

Centralized Controlled Education Center.

                  The elderly
lose their intestines.
The IUD implanted by the state dislodges.
                         I bleed
but never menstruate.

Misuse of state property is an offense.

Piss in the bucket, pig.
                Baotou, baotou.

Closing your eyes to the light is a crime
never stop looking at the light
on the ceiling under the floor
              in the corners.
You in the light stupid sow bitch are the crime.
Stand in the camera at all times.
Baotou, baotou.

The guard wears electric gloves,
touches me all over my body,
under my arms, between my legs.

I can’t hold my newborn’s hand.
No longer live in myself.

Even women get the Tiger Chair.

           I’m scared.

                      Mama,

mama.

 

Part 5

At the top of the hill in the dark
graves line up like furrows

where you’d pull weeds
or walk slowly, eyes out for snails
to pluck from the stems
and feed to your cat later.

A bullet
fired from a single rifle
impacts the right side of my chest.

It’s imperative the heart is not struck—
to ensure my body’s organs
have a continuous supply of oxygen.

The suddenness and shock
act as a kind of anesthesia.
Or so it is said.

I do not stop living.

Men from trucks painted with crosses
incise my body
and accept the harvest.

I stop walking
so another man can continue.

Kidneys,
liver,
heart,
corneas.

Soon, a use for my bones.

               An altar
waits to be built
under the dirt.

My head and legs
spasm and twitch.

The cross
is the universal symbol
of mercy and aid.

A festival of fertility and fruition.

Demeter is honored,
Hou Tu,
Pachamama.

          The offering
is universal.

I give myself
as food
for the State.

 

jms xuange writes poems concerned with the body under authority, systems of belief, and the uses to which human life is put. Her work often moves between mythic language and institutional speech, attending to the points where devotion, surveillance, and power converge. She lives quietly and publishes infrequently.

collateral invertebrate

the deluge has come
with pipe-dream promises   
     of a cease-fire  
to ceaseless      rain:
worms writhe aimless
on asphalt—their water-gorged
burrows deserted   
in violent    surrender
        of    birthplace        
before the tunnels    caved    
there was no time to count
heads        somewhere 
a child is crying

in the inertia    of night
          worms ascend 
from subterranean haven     
to breathe     through damp
skin—cellophane pink  
that splits        raw
against the concrete
while hailstones fall
from the open
maw      of the sky

at the surface    they find
that there are worse things
than    drowning        
in domestic soil—
what of execution
far    from home
by men with guns
their tongues   foreign
some worms will    break
free       but death
    waits:   coiled    
like a serpent
beneath    the heels
of rubber boots

the truth:    it is still raining
& worms have no hands
to hold    each other—
nor    to pray:       even God
crumbles
in the aftershock
of wet   bombs        
that will ruin
whatever resists
whatever remains

 

cherry season

I swallow the pit   
on purpose:    I want to know
the taste of cyanide 
like how I microdose death    
& drop pennies  
that never reach
the center    of the Earth        
tell me:    did it hurt
when your life    
digested you    whole   

I want to feel    roots
grow     in my gut     
    intestines    entwined
           I need proof   
I’m not rotting:     I devour 
       ripe    stone   
fruit    from the corner store
& guilt    burns 
a hole   in my throat

when I go home
to my   empty
apartment:  I choke
on gravity     I sit in the dark  
while takeout menus
mock me    
from the kitchen counter    
taunt   with laminated   
tongues:
“let us guess—another table
 for one?”        &  again    
       you haunt    
the balcony     with your phantom
cigarette    smoke

last year     before
        you died
we sat on a bench
& threw bread at pigeons       
they pecked the ground    
in sync      mechanical     
    like wind-up toys
you joked     that the birds  
work for the government
    & we laughed until  
no sound came out   now 
that you’re gone   
I see the cameras   behind
their eyes         red
lights     blinking—

I’m under 24h surveillance
caught   on live CCTV   
    while I ruin
whatever    morning   
fits    in my hands—
      another wet season 
of breakdowns    on train platforms:
I always think about you  
when it rains

 

Dara Goodale (they/them) is a Romanian-American queer multigenre writer and university student living in Lausanne, Switzerland. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, the American Poetry Journal, Cleaver Magazine, Thimble Literary Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and more. Dara is a Pushcart nominee and was a finalist for the Gasher Press 2025 Bennett Nieberg Transpoetic Broadsize Prize. You can find them on Instagram @daragoodale and online at daragoodale.com

33 and afraid

of the water on the bathroom’s floor 
while I hold my phone in one hand 
masturbate with another. Afraid of
bacteria from the burst open sewer
line swimming into potable water
pipe as old as the city. Afraid of plastic.
Petrol. News of Pterodactyls rebirthed
for fun. Direwolves sniffing diesel
and unlocking a Pleistocene memory
of genocide. Afraid of microplastic

competing with my already tired
sperm. Flagellar movements. Whips
unless asked for. Afraid of imprisonment
by glowing screens like carrot on a
diet chart of a diabetic rabbit. Afraid
of a lover asking me to stay longer
than my telomerase’s fastidiousness
to keep my life in check. Afraid of 
being unable to rent a refrigerator
in the middle of summer. Ice cream

dripping on my favourite t-shirt
with a hundred holes. Afraid of walls
thin as my country’s collective temper.
Broadcasting all the secret fights and
crying tournaments I have with my
ten-year-old self. Afraid of friends’
cancer. Their heart attack. Their memory
crash. Their blood loss from slashes
as they run across streets being chased
by their relatives. Afraid of streets.

Their night time constant head turning
guidelines. Afraid of visa applications.
Being told I am not worthy in red ink
of a foreign country’s consulate made
with water drawn from my hometown’s
once ankle-depth groundwater. Afraid
half the dust in my home is my skin
unable to hold on. Afraid of failing
again and again and again and again 
until trying again feels like a cloudburst.

Afraid of turning 34. Getting married
under pressure by the government
and genealogy alike. Afraid of our home
being snatched away. The one place
where papa still throws a pebble, then
another. Beats dadaji’s bamboo stick
on the black metal grill to chase away
the ghosts of unforested macaques
at 3 am. Afraid of infinite possibilities
ashen into wasted potential, just like him.

 

Dear Sohraab

Manchester 2013

            After Lemn Sissay

Right before the girlfriend of the politician / ’s son dragged you away from me, you said, “Aapke watan se kisiko mil ke kaafi achha laga.” The provincial / in you must have recognised the townscent on me / while the cityfolk and the powerful schemed to drag / us apart. Dear Sohraab, even if your name wasn’t / Sohraab, I felt the warmth / in your callused handshake. The tip of your moustache / the right amount of pride-curved. I saw you / once again, a couple of months later, at the UNICEF concert for raising polio / awareness, and money to send back to your country. You / wearing the cyan t-shirt carrying the world / on your chest. The girlfriend of the politician’s son / hovered around him like a fly around cow / dung, came to check on you, you bowl of doodh sevaiyyan, / carrying disease. I’d have liked to meet you, know more about / your grandparents. Did they suffer like mine / for the schematics drawn by the politician’s uncle? Did your daada also start / an ice cream factory, then shut it for gelatine / wasn’t something he was comfortable handling? Your daadi / did she also call you puttha because you climbed down the family / cot she spent her final years on, while facing her / instead of looking away because somehow even at that tender age / of breastmilk and Cerelac with mashed bananas, you knew you’d want to hold her face / in your myopic eyes? Was there a communal / bakery in your nanihaal? Did your naani get a thousand / aata biscuits baked for you to take home, / share with your friends? Did your naanaa / also pass away while your mother was still too young to understand the stickiness / of grief? Do you think / our grandparents would’ve known each other in a past life, / shared the burdens of crossing over the border / of generations with each other’s shampoo-sachet-curtained grocery shops / and drought-inclined farmland? I wanted to ask you / so much, get to know whether you used Brylcreem / or watched Pokémon in an Urdu dub? Was Bulbasaur your favourite / Pokémon too? Did you also live as a joint family, drink freezer-chilled Coca-Cola and were not allowed / to buy mouser guns because they reminded your family of the past / which they somehow could never run away from? Did you / skip eating your favourite aloo patties with cancer-red ketchup, saving / your daily allowance to buy the gun anyway? Did it come with the same lemon / yellow plastic beads as mine / or was yours orange, like that of some of my friends? Thanks to the brainwashing / of an uncle who was more American than your computer / engineer cousins settled in California, did your family / also burst at its seams? Like that one shiny maroon cork ball you must have / received as a gift on your fourteenth birthday but still carried everywhere? The mouser gun, / did you hold it in your gully cricket centurion hands sobbing, mumbling apologies / to your father, repeatedly saying that you’re the reason everything is / falling apart? And did your father, instead of shouting and screaming / at you, maybe even flash heating / your cheek with his righteous backhand that made even / the pro table tennis players shudder for a moment / during a district level tournament, got down on his knees / and engulfed you in his heating pad warmth, of which you knew until then only / from a distance? Did your father have diabetes too? / And blood pressure? Maybe the lungs of a smoker / not because he smoked cigarettes or beediyan but sat immersed in a room / that always reeked of agarbatti and dhoop, and a dysfunctional liver / because of a bad vaidyashala prescription? We could have compared / notes on whether you collected tazos from packets of masala chips, or third copy glossy / decks of WWF trading cards, back when WWF meant as much / wrestling as pandas. From the looks of it / you would never have been called a panda by your bullies like I was, although I know / how intergenerational trauma is not just psychological. Our genetics / shaped by starvation orchestrated by the country we met in, dear Sohraab, / has made us susceptible to sugar and anger alike. How much sugar did you take, anyway, / in your morning cup of chai? Or were you like me, and had grown to like the self-defeating / taste of black coffee? What did you do / after our conversation that ended / with the division of our once-shared watan, and after the concert, where I saw you from afar? Did the 

t         p                r                   
r                           a        f       l 
i         h       a                            
u                 n       i         a        
m                t        n                 l

for you, at any point during your stay in the city / of loom museums and sports money? Maybe one day / this rain will fall too, this rain of a fast-approaching century / of division that has coloured the bricks of clothes mills / red. Our grandfathers could have tarred their hands and lungs in them / if they’d moved to this country like so many others in the sixties and the seventies. Here, / faced yet another othering. Maybe then, we could have been family / friends, don’t you think? Fought over county cricket clubs and neighbouring countries / we would have visited to meet our respective relatives, reconnect / with our once-nourished roots? We could have draped the rainbow / of new beginnings, birthed naked in the middle of every August, / always vulnerable. Tell me, did you ever think of me like that?

 

Lavanya Arora (they/he) is an independent researcher and writer from Uttarakhand, currently residing in Bengaluru, India. Their literary work has found a home in Josephine Quarterly, Frontier Poetry, Thimble Literary, and elsewhere. A 2024 Himalayan Emerging Writer, they dream of extensive dinner dates with fictional characters while (begrudgingly) editing their debut novel. Instagram: @lavaurora.

A Beautiful Machine

Tonight I am cratered in an East Coast summer so heavy it sticks to my chin like molasses. An all-American, neo-Western stargirl winks at me from her palace on the dive bar sign forty feet high. The sight of her glittering teeth molds to my shoulder. I swear, they’re growing a new set beneath my flesh, molars spreading everywhere, heat bridging across my throat like a beautiful machine. My heat making a beautiful machine. This white man, more wrinkled than the napkin in his hand, asks me how I could be so pretty for an Asian girl. I’ve gone Oriental before, you could be my new favorite. I think of roadkill by the highway next to the bar, or whatever makes this country happy, like a lone hunter holding his rifle up to the sky, begging it to open up for once. Open up, pretty girl. Tell me where you’re really from. I can be just as American. I can be his mechanical ragdoll pressed against the mini Bible in his banged-up Ford T. I can show him my robot body on the way to the next gas station and bash it open with his pocket knife and all that would come out is grease, parts. Under all that steel lies my animal heart, beating, beating, human insides steaming on the backseat, gushing on beat to the drum of a readily fired semi-automatic gun. Drive me, mister. Jesus, just take the damn wheel. I’ll soothe myself with the noise of birds that get shot midair, their wings paralyzed in motion, noisy all the way down. Let all the roadkill be rain, lining the overpass as if it were a wedding aisle, the same way this country makes bodies pile for empire. Start revving, mister. Then accelerate. I tell the man we smell of gasoline. The hunter fills me up with gunpowder, saying he’ll make me into a little dove and fashion these alien arms with metal feathers. I can wage American war, spill American blood. I can be as American as a car on the freeway. Amen, babygirl, the hunter says to me. I’m blinded by his phone flash on the operating table. I squint and I am conscious of it. Like a wild creature caught in headlights. Like a man watching hardcore pornography. Eyes that drown in some type of artificial glow. After he’s finished, he puts on the radio. Fresh oil starts leaking out of my ears. The announcer talks about 4th of July deals and the best ways to pick up women, celebrity divorces, road closures. He says you’re the image of freedom; I just listen.

 

Angelina Luo is an Asian-American poet living in Massachusetts with a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Central themes of their writing include identity, queerness/lesbian love, the body and body horror, and suburban surrealism. Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Same Faces Collective, and Jabberwocky. They also say: to a free Palestine, and for all people undergoing oppression to liberate themselves from occupation and imperialism.

A Diary Entry: 10:15am

You moved where You keep
the empty grocery bags
You know the ones You save to stuff
garbage in the garbage
the ones from the trader joe’s we used to go to
You know, the one that used to make those snacks You liked
the ones I feel bad for forgetting the name of
but You moved them and they are gone and
I feel like a guest looking for something
to wrap my wrappers in

do You remember where you kept them?
in that old black something or other,
I never knew what it was made for just
what You decreed it,
maybe it was once a plunger holder
or a trash can itself but
I remember its shape and its
silver side that warped my face when
I would play in its reflection.

it was right there in the pantry under the
sweet shelf, remove that,
the up-too-high-to-reach shelf ,
reserved for tuesdays and thursdays.
but now it’s no everest
it’s no nothing worth climbing at all,
its wonderland turned cobwebs turned storage

do You remember when I tried to scale its walls
to reach the top I fell and split my lip and
You weren’t mad but You didn’t give me candy either.
my first addiction, my first secret.

when I was a kid I knew I would need to lie
I don’t know why I just knew that I knew
there was something something
I would have to hide

so I began to practice
I played pretend at being bad at it
purposely getting caught in clumsy sneaking.
I would let You think you knew my tells
but You didn’t know me at all
You don’t even know how to spell my name
but I was stuffing sweet tarts under my mattress
making false bottoms to my drawers
inside my room: treasure troves
so I would never have to climb everest again
and so I could have what I want
when I wanted it.
because, if nothing else
I am spoiled and I always have been and
I always get what I want when I want it
except for when I want an empty grocery bag
no, I can’t have that because You moved them
and there is nothing left to warp my face other than my frowning.

I wonder if I was born to be an addict or if
I  just saw it coming,
I wonder if I knew there was going to be a secret or just made it so.

or maybe the hiding was never about the object of uppers
maybe it was about why I needed them.
maybe I knew I would need the
false bottoms for my binders,
to hide the faces I saved for select companies,
under my matters: lists of names and minoxidil,
scissors and KT tape
cus the on brand is sooo expensive,
underwear with socks sewn in,
drawings of boys I wish I looked like.

but this was not the sweetness, no
this hiding was bitter, more bitter than
the afterglow.

but I’m in the old room I boobytrapped, and I’ve gotten a new mattress and the lists of names are gone and the scissors are on my desk and the KT tape is under my sink now and I’ve given up on the whole minoxidil thing to be quite honest, but there’s remnants of the powder and a crushed ciggarette which I never felt because

I am no princess and this is no pea

and I went to find an extra grocery bag to
throw away these things
I forgot I was hiding
but you moved them and
I’m not sure this is my home anymore.

here,
there is nowhere for me to empty my emptying
because you moved where you kept the extra grocery bags and
I’m not sure this is my home anymore

and I’m not so sure this is a secret.

 

Lue “LIKETHEHIGHWAY” Khoury (born 2002) is a gender-fluid Palestinian-Greek American conceptual artist and writer whose work blends theory and memoir. Practicing what they describe as “identity alchemy,” LIKETHEHIGHWAY treats life as source material, investigating how bodily value, meaning, purpose, and worth are produced, and the pursuit of self-actualization and freedom. Through diary entries, essays, sculpture, installation, and performance, they offer themself as a case study. Their work has received international recognition, including features in Ada Søby’s forthcoming film The Blank Canvas, on iHeartRadio, and an invitation to present at Dread Scott’s All African Peoples Consulate during the 2024 Venice Biennale.

STATUESQUE, successful angel.

BISEXUAL, bilingual, blue-eyed beaut.
STRAIGHT-A, straight teeth, straight-acting stud.
MAN with three bolded asterisks.
PRETTY, passing, post-op, femme Steely Dan fan.
JUST A BUSINESS TYPE GUY who likes stockings.
LOVES TRAVEL and reading, but feels younger dressed.
RECENTLY found myself thirsty as calves.
NEWLY FULL throat. NEWLY LEAPING the firebreak.
NEW to gown of thorns.
NEW to the lovely of two-day bruises.
RECENTLY time on my hands and no one to lap at it.
RECENTLY truth, in a blur, in dark window.
QUICK-witted. WELL-groomed. GENTLE-clamberer.
PURE as the driven Vancouver slush, seeks same.
GOOD with tools. SMART as winks.
FLUSH with carabiners, seeks same.
NO BITTER parades. NO HALF-ASSED dancing.
SEEKS unpinioned raptor wing.
MUST kind. MUST swan glance.
MUST NOT be enamored of open sea.
NO MICHIGANDERS. NO JAZZ.
SEEKS same. SEEKS same. SEEKS likewise.
SEEKS levitating trays of sweets.
SEEKS can I put actually raise a child.
SEEKS dick on a stick.
SEEKS cry out my mouth stuffed rock tumbler loud fabric.
SEEKS tall but passable TS for marriage, maybe more.
FOR DUMB lazy lady days, drying our hair.
FOR PROTEST. FOR BIGOT heart attack.
FOR LONG walks in epistemicidal gaps.
FOR THREE jeweled breaths, as easy as you lost track are you there.
HOLD ME, hold me, you goddamn idiots,
WHAT ELSE is worth your ruin and stitches?
WILL RESPOND to anyone.
PROMISE to respond to all.

after 1970s-2000s personals from publications including Gendertrash from Hell, Empathy Magazine, The Transsexual Voice, and Simply Gorgeous.

 

Callie Jennings (@aporianautics) is a trans writer, musician, & game designer based in Boston. She received the 2025 Zone 3 Editor’s Award, 2024 Stacy Doris Prize, and 2023 Bennett Nieberg Transpoetic Broadside Prize, and has work in Fourteen Hills, fifth wheel press, manywor(l)ds, and Fruit Journal. Her newsletter is at threemachineexpression.substack.com, and chances are she’s dancing. Photo by Jamie A.M.