thought my glass smelled like puke
or maybe the whole bar or maybe
the guy leaning over me no he
smelled like cologne smelled like
this other time at a bar smelled
i hope it follows you, circling like a bird of prey. i hope it sticks to your shoe like dog shit. i’m not doing well, and i think you should know. i hope this email slithers over the tile on your kitchen floor and sinks its teeth into your ankle.
I pull my curtains open, lean on the sill,
sweating. Headlights bob uphill toward me.
Randy’s car, rattling tin an hour late,
swerves to park across the road: flicker
through the windshield, thumps of rock radio.
When you died, the grooves
in your back turned to rivers
on which I set sail everything I stole from you:
trope is unhinged femme / prevents me from writing / Annie Wilkes hobbles a man because bipolar, because obsessive / Dr. Robert Elliott murders because transgender, because toxic masculinity, because self-hatred
dawn at the train station:
hushed voices scatter last night’s news
into the air like goldfish the
morning light plucks it pours
it over pillars & swims at your feet.
One way, you pass a house with chickens in the yard and you think, “Ah, I’ve always wanted chickens. I’d be better with chickens.”
One way, you go everywhere by bike and live in a flap tent alone. Your thighs are sculpted like marble.
One way is full of bubbles: bathtubs, gum, champagne, Jacuzzis.
Twenty three from you, my mother
half my body/mind
for sure my blue eyes
but not my right-handedness
which has made my life easier
I have always hated writing about myself
I’m not photogenic
And I am afraid that my horniness
Would get in the way
But this is where we’re at
my neighbor drapes the strings the first weekday in december,
neon gold cords for inflatable mickey, santa, & snowman
melted simulacra until sunset when the front lawn descends
into a madness of bright blue icicles, rainbow garland
across the garage, pink orbs of love encircle a glittering present,
Faces fixed in separate
boxes, lips stiff,
eyes flat with fatigue,
I am so often smiling.
A lot of black people live [here]
And they – got big houses
And the houses all look kind of
the same
The minute the bullet pierced his face
the sky so moon-flooded collapsed into a rhapsody
and the city swales swelled with lilac wildflowers—
it was a winter of untameable fire
and bitter nostalgia, brother. . .
As of this hour, the sun has been up some time and is bright as August begins
and an invisible hand moves among leaves, tickles them in their deeply green
luster. I’m thinking of you, the look in your eyes—weary. I want to fill this house . . .
On this tepid day
while the COVID clock ticks past
one-hundred-eighty-thousand casualties
we are digging shallow holes
into a Vermont hillside to lay down a line
of low-bush blueberries [. . .]
no one can remember who
bought this mug, or if it belonged
to a larger set, which got lost along
some move or broken in some forgotten
box—maybe in the basement or the attic? [. . .]
I meet a girl who is an alien for Halloween, which is the secret queer costume of the decade; she wears it in green sparkles and two antennae launching from her hair. I am trying to tell if she is straight, and also, to be sexy, so I ask,
what is your favorite emoji? . . .
I get home and my kids ask me to explain simple things: Why don’t humans lay eggs? Will it ever snow? Do people stop loving you because you’re far away? They’ve taped a sheet of paper to the wall, to keep a tally of all the mosquitos they killed since we arrived. . .
There he was carrying a tray of bygone at a San Francisco Hilton. Surrogate for husband #1. Food services manager, not engineer. . .
Astrologers say this moon in Scorpio is where we welcome the death of an old life, an old identity, old ways of being. It’s letting ourselves be reborn […]
My father did not fight in Vietnam, as he was a young scholar with a family Until he left home one day without explanation, exiled himself from doing harm.[…]
How to let people know I love them without reminding them I’m real. Am I real? Would it be better if I was real? How many times can a real person say “I love you” before someone gets annoyed and straight-up murders them?[…]
In Theology, I learned Jesus called his father Abba, and passed because it’s the name I call my own—who feared that I would leave Friday Mass half-faithful, forgetful of the place where I learned how to be hated.[…]
trust me when I say I am not you. I do not know who you are, your likes & dislikes, why you care about this-that, him-her, why you cried or hours on end over at Krakow, burying yourself in the chest of a room I can’t recall[…]
the dying Italian mother of seven
raps the ceiling with a wood cane
as we make love in silence—no
less eager than a mother scolding
I knew for a decade just one way to die the one that took my uncle, my cousin, all the kids from my high school who didn’t leave town.[…]
not subtlety, and at sundown begin moaning. The veterinarians act more veterinarianly. It must be internal damage. It must be the liver rupturing. Yes, the liver. And that is how these prognoses tend. Diagnosis being […]
Poets are just whisperers, whispering the rose verse, Weaving words as a curse. They wander the groves In order to find doves. They wander the meadows, So they find adagios. They wander the streams, To find the crowns of queens. Poets are just whisperers, Who their lament makes ornate.[…]
A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.
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Photo credit: Rakia Khalid
Photo credit: Lucas Ranieri
Credit: Furery Reid Spelman College staff photographer
Credit: Emily Tarnawa