POSTS

Bedtime Story: the girl and the quarter moon

Preface

I grew up on folk tales, not fairy tales at bedtime.
a whole different set of stories and ways
to tell them. different expectations. different lessons (I learned).
my bedtime stories spoke of women finding ways not to be sacrificed.
what I learned was
people will leave you on the cliffside to wait for a monster
who is coming to devour you—for their own peace
what I learned was
people will think some things are too big to fight and
the way to get by in their shadow is to let women die to sate it
what I learned was
most of the time, you save yourself.
you find a way to be clever or fast or loving enough
to stop the monstrous cycle right before
its jaws close around you. what I learned was
not to expect to be saved but to know
that if I was good enough at the right, constantly-changing things,
I could save myself, most times.
this carries through.
still doing it. just learning now how to
maybe stop playing this story out.
I am tired of having
to find the right way to be good enough
to be allowed to survive. to claw out my own place
with the paw I struck from the monster
you left me out to feed. tired of the blood
running down my body, from my body,
leaving my body, leaving my body curled and confined
in the softest things I have, but still, the nest I make for myself
feels some days more like I have padded the trap
I was set in as bait. lined the metal teeth with batting.
they’ll still bruise, you know, through that. can still break
an unsettled bone. some days it feels like there is no way
I leave the trap and it doesn’t spring.

 

Chapter 1

a quarter moon is a half moon, there
are two ways of thinking about it. a full moon
could be called a half moon, on the logic of
a quarter moon – halfway through the cycle.
there is no half moon, officially.
whatever that means. which officials.
sounds like there are two half moons to me.

 

Chapter 2

I see half of the face that faces me.
we call it quarter because of the cycle,
the whole cycle of new moon to new moon,
and this half-face marks the one-quarter point.
                                                                                           but
reading up on quarter moons, looking at diagrams
of moon cycles, her face emerges in a new way, and the
quarter I see is the quarter of the whole spherical moon, she round
in every dimension. that far dark. calling her half-lit face quarter
an answer, maybe, to the half we never see. this is what
persuades me to quarter moon over half moon. all we can ever have
is half the moon. and quarter moon reminds us that half the time,
all we see is just half of that.

 

Chapter 3

autism gave me words for things I was already doing: like masking.
it applies elsewhere too, though, has shown up so many places in my life full
of nooks, full of places someone else wants to forget. this is when,
masking is when, you feel safer hiding who and how you be
because the society you live in has convinced you
             (often accurately – this part stings the most)
that if you do not hide you, Bad Things will happen. to you.
around you. because of you. and your not-hiding. it says
do not show your autism. your adhd. your POTS, EDS, the other three,
or what ill looks like in your body.

do not show the way joy needs to fizzle out every finger when you get overwhelmed with it.
do not show how some sounds, like the sound of the scrape of that knife on the ceramic
plate, sizzle through your brain, pain searing and shaking you from the inside,
literal pain, do not show it. do not show how hard it is to walk
during a POTS episode, how hard it is to walk with long Covid,
how hard it is to walk with two feet injured from your connective tissue disorder.
do not need a wheelchair. do not look how you look when you need
a wheelchair and don’t have one. do not look how you look when you need.
do not let the expression drop fast from your face when you run out
of the energy that holds it on. do not hold an expression (out of habit)
past when you feel it. but do learn to fake the expressions that make other people feel
comfortable. like the ones that make them feel like you’re listening
because it’s how they listen, but keeping up the Listen face takes all your focus
and you don’t hear a word. learn to hold these faces all day: at school, at work, around strangers, around people who insist that you’re friends. do not let these expressions drop.
no matter what you miss. do not let them drop.

 

Chapter 4

before I learned what masking was and what I really sounded like inside,
with the filter of everyone else scrubbed off and my flesh close to bloody from it,
before then I only ever showed a quarter moon. it was all I felt allowed.

 

Chapter 5

there are two quarter moons: first and third. quarters.
one is easy to see, it’s an evening rise, visible around sunset.
the other, third quarter moon, is up when we are, most of us,
asleep. the full moon is so bright with sun that the details
get lost in the glare. this tenth-bright half-face quarter
is where you see the relief of craters. I am told even binoculars
will get you there. and see, when it is just the first quarter moon
you see, that sunset staple, you will only know the ridges
on a single side, one half of the moon. [interjection – one quarter.
still half her face is always back, back away, you will only see half a half.
it’s simple math. you may never see the other craters. and
that can be okay. but you may never know that’s all you have.
and not knowing is a different story.][whispered: you did not
realize I was missing so many essential somethings.]

 

Chapter 6

one eye cannot see the other. on a human face, on a moon face.
I didn’t know I was missing the other half, the other half a half,
either. it’s these past few years that have retaught me myself,
the selves I found and then lost as a child, a tween, a teen,
a twenty-something. even in private, I did not have me, not—
not even close to the way it is now. this gift of my own fullness,
access to a more actual me, one of the many strange presents
illness has left at my door so far. I am glad I chose to unwrap.

 

Chapter 7

but where did I really learn to hide?

who taught me the world wasn’t safe for me?

an inventory of me in the context of this country provides a case for hiding:
             my tribes survived based on how well they became invisible to white eyes
             the statistics for women receiving violence remain shocking
                           a recent trip to australia drove this home:
                           I noticed myself telling men when they were doing wrong
                                          and yelling at them when politeness didn’t work
                           and for once, didn’t fear for my safety. a miracle.
                           on returning home, I told a female friend about it.
                           she said it sounded like an alternate universe.
             the time, less than five years ago, I had to hide in the basement of my house
                           while my drunk, violent neighbor hurled homophobic slurs at the front door.
             last fall, when I felt a new foot injury burn into life, but was walking home alone, late,
            and remembered what they tell young gazelles: they pick off the weak
                           and the sickly. do not look sickly. do not limp. you have to look strong
                           enough to fight them off so they don’t try. and how much worse
                           the pain was when I got home / from bearing all that weight.
             I’m not ready to tell strangers the inventories for being
                           autistic
                                          ace
                                                    both chronically and intergenerationally poor
             I’m not ready to talk about the intersections
             but another strange gift of illness: all this extra time I spend at home
                           is time I’m not being harassed.

 

Chapter 8

I don’t fault myself for hiding. I celebrate learning to come out anyway. I would like to get to make only that decision, to feel safe enough to always choose it. here is my request: consider—have you taught me to hide? you. every you. it can be smaller than you think. smaller than you think you can see. but I promise you can learn. wake up for the sunrise to see that other half moon, that other quarter, in detail. you will notice the craters. no microscope. no telescope. they are so visible when you look the right way. I have already shown you so many, close up. like this.

 

Chapter 9

my love is one of the first to really see the back,
the proverbial dark side of the moon, the half
that gets forgotten when you call a quarter moon
a half moon. she said she wanted to see
whatever was there. I finally believed that what was there
was worth loving, could be shown to the right people.
and she was willing to walk around, to the side
you can’t see from here, and I want to convey

how sincere this is and how much that mattered. to someone who has been taught you hide whole selves to survive or be loved. it was old and it was recent. and she said “I want it all” and I said “I wouldn’t want anyone who wouldn’t” and these are why it’s different this time.

 

Chapter 10

all the years of hiding and pushing through, saving yourself and finding the ways to be good enough not to be killed, living by the merit du jour,

these will run you into the ground.

my bedtime stories would always end before the heroines could get the chronic illnesses we get when we overclock ourselves to survive. illnesses we then have to hide.

the phases are a cycle. new moon to new moon. have you ever seen the whole face?

 

Arianne True (Choctaw, Chickasaw) is a disabled queer poet and teaching artist from Seattle, and has spent most of her work time working with youth. She’s received fellowships and residencies from Jack Straw, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Repertory Theater, among others, and is a proud alum of Hedgebrook and of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in Tacoma with her cat, wife, and dog, and is always questing for high-quality dairy-free baked goods. Arianne is the 2023-2025 Washington State Poet Laureate. You can find more at ariannetrue.com.

 

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To the poet of immigrant home-building, dislocation, feminine monstrosity, and blank space

after Jennifer S. Cheng

1

you wedged your tongue between my ribs, speaking of shadows and skeletons
I split open my body so the syllables could better haunt my crevices
flesh knows how to be porous
I have always suspended my weight to keep from being known
but all my life I have
wanted to know how to speak   

2

To feel the hot touch of an echo
To hear the simultaneous fracture of bone
To study the volume and density of the silence created by a word that could not be translated
                             (because 緣分is not serendipity, 孝順 not filial piety)
To forge from the unborn shapes angled in my throat
       a metaphor, a line
To reach a hand into a crater, an interval of silence,
and encounter a sister

3

Dear Unsayable Word,
I put the shell of my ear against your spleen, waiting for you to take on mass.

4

                forgive me           unfinished sentence
                                                                    for these were all the words I knew                               
                                                                                                                                               this was all I had

5

(                                                                                                                                                                   )

6

while I was trying to make myself disappear
envying the katydid for being able to resemble its home
I tried to tell you
that all my words were filched from half-open lips
the ends of sentences plucked from colonial tombs

you said listen
when we are trying to say the world, we are trying to say its holes¹
said
the body doubles what it cannot hold²
so I let my skin stretch  tear     lengthen
the femur bend to traverse the distance between
one self and another
swallow the cuticle, a hard history
at the center: a new body

---

¹ Jennifer S. Cheng, “Dear Blank Space: A Literacy Narrative,” Literary Hub.
² Jennifer S. Cheng, “the impact of foreign bodies; the earth collapsing,” The Nation.

 

Christine Huang 黃凱琳 (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese-American writer and artist. She joins the large community of voices calling for the liberation of the Palestinian people and oppressed people everywhere, and she stands in solidarity with those struggling against colonialism, white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and all systems of domination.

 

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in this hydrocortisone house

arguments gust, increase knots
till soil, host two truths and a lie:

1. all my fiction is true
2. all 卖 (mài)^[1] fiction is true
3. all my fickle 身 (shen)^[2] is true

here, eggs are whipped frothy
with chopsticks, bilingual morning news
booming over the crowded kitchen island.

here, you can find mama in the garden,
mornings gloved in solitude.
the hummingbirds ask her again:
what’s the hypotenuse of lonely?
against a plume of kangaroo paws,
mama sprinkles crumbled eggshells
onto various plants: fertilizer full of calcium.

it’s either used for that or for family walks,
marriage on decline, domestic pantomime.

here, filial personalities pang like canker sores.
baby mangosteen observes parents bicker
behind the banister. two shadows
blustering: couda shoudas flung.
scalding wool words of chinglish
subtitled mandarin overheard.

sometimes mama & baba garden together, armistice.
curry trellises. pick cucumbers. check on the succulents.
this tender teamwork has the sweaty seedlings relieved.

baby mangosteen learns to think cubist for survival,
renovates maslow’s triangle of needs for 开心^[3]
sharing only tufts of truth to either parent,
keeps her gay shrouded beneath marine layers.

she doesn’t recall a period when she liked hugging
baba. she does recall the truculent epoch she’d fake sleep
when he’d visit her near midnight after working the ER.

here, vertebrae can’t wait to grow up
especially when splintered adults
don’t understand chromosomes

arrive knowing how to refract
not reflect, some viscous violet truth—
of mimicry, of men.

---

^[1] sold
^[2] spirit, heart, ghost
^[3] open heart; open mind; jubilee 

 

EMDASH AKA Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) is a writer, open mic maker, and child of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve earned funding from Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, Jersey City Arts Council, Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, and Rutgers-Newark—where they received an MFA in Poetry and taught undergraduates. She has also received a Best of the Net 2023 nomination in poetry and microfiction. For publication and performance history, visit emdashsays.com. They are Missouri-born, California-raised and based in anxiety. When not writing, she’s likely telling one too many jokes.

 

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Convergent Double Golden Shovel for Leaving the Ground in Black and White

after “Rough Landing, Holly” by Yellowcard

under the blue topping an endless ceiling. From

here to eternity, we’ll always wonder about the

mechanics of activating the sky,

consuming ourselves farther than she

wanted to ask for. What did I do? I’m just Holly, I just pulled

the lever, and a catastrophe unrolled beside me —

tear this fucking glassy skyscraper — this terror shine —  down

and get off the damn drugs. I’m trying to imagine some damn lights in the horizon tonight,

but unfortunately, God wouldn’t let our sins go, wouldn’t let

anything into that fitting room with that black dress — and her

telling me, “just cut off the back” — “just backless” — “just breathe” — “just go.”

 

Young Fenimore Lee (they/them) is a Korean-American kid, poet, and music journalist whose work has appeared in beestung, DIALOGIST, Entropy, Existere, filling Station, and other publications. Indie rock, emo, post-hardcore, and other music genres are important influences in their writing. They are editor/founder at Jellybones Mag (jellybones.net). They received a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from The New School. They are currently pursuing a PhD at Ohio University.

 

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Portal of Breaking Cycles

I do not want to feel the privilege in a man’s spit or in the way he says my name I want to feel his hands trace my stretch marks over brown body, cut his fingers on this glass of jagged healing when we touched hands was it that impulse to look a man in the eyes, want love not ask for love, I still think it’s so wrong, do I deserve an empty space he leaves when he goes, I want to be enveloped in a terrible dazzling thing, sometimes I explore how my expectations of violence intrude a tender moment, because even then I want a man’s revenge-love knife at my neck to slit.

 

Mateo Perez Lara (they/them/theirs) is a queer, non-binary, Latinx poet from California. They have a pamphlet of poems, Glitter Gods, showcased with Thirty West Publishing House. They have an MFA in Poetry from Randolph College. Their poems have been published in EOAGH, The Maine Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere.

 

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On the Incompatibility of Homosexuals

The first time I laid finger on a man’s abs,
I thought I hit bone—the world excavated
and pried away. Only its depths remain,
blubless and vulnerable, a body’s bare rack,
an illusion of a treasure trove. I expected
to dig deeper before I faced the residues
of his absence, but there we were: hollow
like wily trees, stretched too far sunward
our pinkies could barely touch. I watched
the ridges accordion as he heaved, muscle
isolated and splitting. A body striving to be
lonely because that was the language
it knew: live long so he can prosper. He needs
to prove to God: he worked hard so he could die
late. After sex, he shows me his FitBit,
how he loves the numbers climbing
up his arm like ants. His sweat
cascades down his concave stomach.
For a while, he looked more beautiful
than he is, body bone-sharp and angled,
a life spent whittling oneself away.
Why, I asked, would you starve
and treat it an achievement? The aircon’s whirs
meld with his stomach’s grumbles. I don’t know,
he says, suddenly aware how we were nothing
alike. I had given up appeasing boys and God.
From young, they demanded too much from me
too fast. I could not keep up. All I had left
was an appetite for self-preservation.
So I ate and ate and my stomach grew
and my body deformed
and I continued to live.

 

Assimilation Pantomb

I’ve grown up here searching for home
in this city teeming with square holes—
certain and cutting, everything molded
by the music of muscled machines.

In this city teeming with square holes,
I unravel my flesh to fit in. I am starved
from the music of muscled machines
side-eyeing me silly till I say: Yes,

I chose to unravel my flesh. I am starved
because I deserve it. My perfect future is
side-eyeing myself silly till I say yes
I will work hard for the shadow I want

because I deserve it. My perfect future is
sweeping its way into all you stand for.
I will work hard for the life I want.
My wrinkles will own this land.

I will sweep away all I have stood on,
a grown-up here searching for home.
My wrinkles will own this land,
certain and cutting.
                          Everything will be mold.

 

When I See Myself on the Big Screen

Euphoria of unkempt hair, of flat nose, of small and sleepy eyes;

Euphoria of sleeping early; of learning how rest rests upon my extinguished skeleton;

Euphoria of toying with immortality, of sleeping in and in and in;

Euphoria of knowing I am made up of acid and my assumed angelic purity is an inference
            from straight people infected by binary thinking;

Euphoria of waking up from a nightmare where I am stuck in a constantly farting toilet;

Euphoria of putting things together in the mirror to encourage diplomacy: a dress and its
            heels, a face and its doll body;

Euphoria of being too much for everyone but actually just enough for me;

Euphoria of exposition, of being lit excellently by sunlight, of being the eye, the camera and  
            the model all at the same time;

Euphoria of being alone for a hot minute, of a quiet day against the city where laughter leaves
            the mouth as homing darts;

Euphoria of enclosure, of a fan that spins above me because I need it to, of being well-  
            maintained and ill-advised;

Euphoria of memorising curse words from the dictionary so I carry blood bullets in my
            tonsils for whenever I need it;

Euphoria of photographic evidence of glow ups, of cheap 1980s eyeshadow looks slayed
            again in 2018;

Euphoria of upskilling despite not getting SkillsFuture credit from the government because
            I’m not Singaporean enough;

Euphoria of making a Sim named Max and flirting with a random buff man at the gym and
            suddenly we’re married and sharing a house with 8 other Sims and it’s actually all
            really overwhelming so I start over and start over and start over;

Euphoria of wearing a graduation gown and feeling it billow around my ankles,
            of knowing that time onstage is the only time I am allowed to be photographed with a dress;

Euphoria of an Avatar remake where queer children can learn to bend gender, of making
            apparent the magic inside us;

Euphoria of justifiably thinking that children are not at all cute but kinda gross, partly out of
            necessity so the straights will not label me (or any other gay person they meet on the
            street) as a paedophile;

Euphoria of mortality, of endings, of clean slates, of factory resets, of recycling;

Euphoria of sequels, of continuity beyond the last cut.

 

Max Pasakorn (he/she/they) is the author of creative nonfiction chapbook, A Study in Our Selves (Neon Hemlock Press, 2023). An alumnus of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ writers, and Yale-NUS College, Max has previously lived in Singapore, Thailand, and the United States. Max’s writing has won the 2024 swamp pink prize in Nonfiction and the Chestnut Review Stubborn Writers’ Contest in Poetry. Their works are in Split Lip Magazine, SUSPECT Journal, Foglifter Journal, Eunoia Review, and others. Read more at maxpasakorn.works or follow Max on Instagram at @maxpsk_writes.

 

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Honeybees (XIV)

XIV. somewhere within my mother’s
body, a colony of honeybees have built
an apiary.

XIII. behind her, i watched as they carried
the nectar across the garden,

through the flowering field, and flew into
her.

XII. after a month, the FBC tests reveal a
low blood count. XI. anaemia the doctor
says

through his checkered socks, oval glass
frames, and stethoscope-bound neck.

X. i would go home and open the
internet to find the causes.

IX. the biopsy reveals cancer. VIII the
doctor is unsure.

VII. the honey begins to leak out the hive
VI. coating everything it touches

in a golden yellow film. V. in the coming
days, we’ll find a way to

release insecticide into the nest. VI. the
scans reveal the bees

have nested somewhere between the
cerebrum and the cerebellum.

III. this morning, the nest cracked and
leaked forth more golden yellow.

II. most of the worker bees are dead
now. I. the queen though keeps growing

fatter, and fatter, and fatter.

 

Erinola E. Daranijo (he/him) is a Nigerian writer. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Akéwì Magazine, and the author of the micro-chapbooks, An Epiphany of Roses (Konya Shamsrumi Press, 2024) and Every Path Leads to the Sea (Ghost City Press, 2024). He splits his time between the ‘cities’ of Ibadan, Lagos, and Cape Town. Say hi on X (formerly Twitter) at @Layworks.

 

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FIRE IN MY BONES BLOOS

Dere ain’t much lef’ on dis side of heaven—
mah woman den become a star, a ball of gas,
dey say, or a slab of hot-water cornbread
tossed up 2 tha sky. Dere ain’t much luv
lef’ in her body, ain’t no mo’ sweet shortnin’ bread
lef’ 2 eat wit coffee. Dis typa thing happened
inna Old Book once, Elijah was took’up inna sky
ona firin’ chariot, took into tha bosom of God.
But mah baby ain’t went 2 no heaven,
she den become a star and I caint help
but cry a solemn cry, tak a step toward
tha blackness, gon’ dress mahself
wit black earf. So don’t bother wit me,
let tha worms and maggots flirt wit me.
Mah woman den become a star, and sens’ dere
ain’t much a nigga can do but sang tha bloos
and look toward tha sky
and hope dat tha fire in mah bones
can make meh a star 2.

 

DELUSIONS OF THE BLOOS 3: ASH OF THE MIND

(:)(—)
sunder the chaste scream of midnight,
an echo buried beneath the permafrost
of a dissembling riot.

I found myself a creeper
hiding in the shadows, skin bloo with death,
bones burned with heat.

I slither to the embrace of a dream   I was woman
sun dancing on my brow, a bitter taste wraps
my tongue                       I found myself in love—
before chaos or cold found distortion           
                                                                                             now a ladybug
I crawl beneath the foot of a giant—
a spade misses cutting me in two,
the cold earth opens, permafrost still thick.             
A shriek pulled me back to midnight,

her shine beclouded—now a moth dancing
in a dusty closet. The flickering light my moon,
the screaming radiator my song—

                                                                                             an alarm sounds
yanking me away from a life of wings,
brilliant lights, that wonderful spade
should have cut me in two, burying me in the permafrost.
Midnight will make me one with the ashes of my mind.

 

Dontay M. Givens II (they/he)—the child of Batavia and Shaylese Givens, daughters of Charlotte and Larry Washington, daughter of Flossie-Mae and Tommie Lee Givens—is a poet from the West Side of Chicago, currently living in Harlem, NYC. They, imag(in)ing anachronisms for their ancestors, rap/write poems which, lingering in the un/broken poetics of black English (Ebonics), hope to ward off the blues. They are currently pursuing an English PhD at New York University with focuses in black studies, medieval and early modern studies, and poetics and aesthetics.

 

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from: Eurozone

Train
conductors who
can only
climax while
reading
Hannah
Arendt

“Bleat” is
always
the last
word you will
find
at the
bottom of any
woman’s soup
bowl






Because the
only cure for my
failed attempt
at auto-
cunnilingus is

Dialectical wife-swap

Agreeing to teach
seminar on father’s
“trumpet
hand” while mother

Relaxes by
the pool with hairy
chested
Kissinger
look-alike

“Because my
last three pap
smears came
back ab-
normal
French is no
longer spoken here”




Always eager to be
seductive
as Goodwill
Corning
Ware. There was
a time, not all
that long ago
when “tight vaginal
canal” was all
any one ever
needed to

Oyster

Which proves
I fell in
love with the last
three men I blew in

Athens

At times
strapped into car
seats, at other
times, thinking
too much
about
Kotex
I left in the Black Sea



Texting
“semination”
and phone auto-
corrects to
“seminarian”
and then to
“domination”

Masculine is never
accepting carton of
cigarettes
from back of
’89 Honda Civic

Meticulously
submissive
clitoris starts
to happen
with Prime
Minister of

France is surrounded
by large body
of water
Like love is so
much colder
when swallowing

Fear of languageing
sleeping
lover’s cock
contains one of
three vibrant
magnolias

Which episodes
from my
sexual history
are hiding in
the difference
between “magnolia”
and “marginalia”

Almost anyone’s
testicles are
capable of at
least one late night
“Origins
of
Totalitarianism” and

All of Joyce
Mansour’s
blue silk undies

 

Ann Pedone’s books include The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53.) Her poetry, non-fiction, and reviews have recently appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Posit, Texas Review, ANMLY, and The American Journal of Poetry. She was a finalist for the 2024 Levi’s Prize. Ann is the founder and editor-in-chief of the journal and small press, αntiphony.

 

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AM I SUPPOSED TO BEHAVE

this chain to the throat
which tightens not
unlike lichen.

encroaching
encircle. collared

from heaven.

hardly anything
anyone meant.

a spectacle in thins
tailored to the vices
god sent

as party favors,
favoring men.

during months of rain,
I make a mouth.
a tooth.
a liver.

I skin-shimmer.
I shirk my bones,
skinned
like an antlered
doe.

now tell me again the prophecy
of the woman encased in drywall
who has my face.

in this dancehall unnothing.

unnothing is dirt.
unnothing is moon.
unnothing is eyes on a mirror

in reflection staging the body a trial,
for pyre the skin.

a faucet drips.

in this room of wyrms,
so many men
asking questions,
then at urinals
pissing their boots.

am lost.
am found.
am hungry for

it.

I.

the door never opens.

a hand pets my thigh.

what are these metrics of fire.
who holds the match.
who burns.

so I endure
endurance.

rabbit entrails dance in the sink.
must I away
to away.

ventriloquized
like a saint, I am not

a body.
I am a place.

I am not
wearing my face.

I am an altar,
a filling cup,

where my blood
is but blooms,
illumined as gorse.

a howl of the future.

the center
of wreckage.

a miracle site.

 

EVENT HORIZON

I am a girl
in a darkened room.
watching a reel-flip

projection of the real,
or otherwise.
true

bluff into
water – overlook
plummet. vista,
vista.

arcana of leap.

engine’s on. lights off.
radio static. car cabin
a black box theatre.

I am much. too much.
he’s nervous, pressing
his jaw to my neck.

suck on the pulse.

I draw my vowels
through the atlantic.
he lets loose
a world in a sigh.

incommensurate
I – daughter
of another life.

bad things happen,
I heard a girl on her phone
say to her mother once.

bad things happen.

we drive out. I chew
my lip. he pulls down
his paisley cravat.

the road’s wet.

the headlights skid like comets
against the steaming asphalt.

my head goes up
in a vertiginous smoke.

then, the motel before us moans,
shutters fluttering out
into vision: heat and light.

he stops.
interior out.

foxglove at the meridian.
true

apothecary. I am at the limit
where no light
escapes.

gunshots ripple
through a tumultuous green
green land.

he opens a door
a door leads into.

common stage.

I sink my teeth
into my wrist. milk blood.
bring it to his lips.

he looks down at me.
with his blue velvet eyes.

takes me in. a star
above us dies.

then, I am, again,
a girl,
in a darkened room,

lining my lips with rouge.

pulling the strings
on my dress.

telling him to.

he takes off
his three-piece.

takes me on
a heart-shaped breath.

we sleep with a whimpering
wolf, which looks like him,
on the foot of the bed.

“True apothecary” is a phrase from Romeo & Juliet.

 

Temperance Aghamohammadi is an Acolyte of the Exquisite. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, Passages North, The Kenyon Review, Annulet, and elsewhere. Hailing from the Northeast, she currently haunts the Midwest.

 

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