Jane Rosenberg LaForge

Medusa, Creator of Men

Medusa builds her own men
exclusively for dancing with,
though she leads on the green
carpeted dance floor, and dips
in all directions. Her partners
assimilate her moves through
the same methods used by
children at videotaped
weddings, their feet astride
the topsides of her fallen
arches in a kind of delicate
act of balance. Medusa’s feet
are hideous, of course.
Yours would be too if
bewitched to stone without
benefit of clippers and polish
or a proper investment in sandals. 

Of all the materiel Medusa
requisitions for her betters,
the most tenuous are boxes
and wrappers from boil-in-a-bag
peas and a full line of frozen
vegetables; to be collected and
cashed in for a giant among
the stuffed and sewn, hobbled
together anatomies that fail
in their approximations—
but that’s the point, is it not,
with Barbies and Kens and
even Skippers, lithe as
Medusa is squat, as a pigeon
she said, and laughed
about it, because pigeons
don’t topple, they hover.
 

Her boldest creation wrenched
from a toilet plunger as spine,
and neck, newsprint for guts,
the flesh of old t-shirts and jeans,
industrial rubber for gloves.
He was mistaken for the genuine
article, a victim fetishized
on the shelf of our garage.
The police were disappointed
when told he was a puppet:
A fiction brought to life-size
in the magnitude of his legend,
as Medusa herself might be
if the shock of her hair and face
were more accessible to
beauty in its mass conventions.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is a novelist, poet, and memoirist in New York. Her novel is The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing). Her most recent collection of poems is Daphne and Her Discontents (Ravenna Press). Her memoir is An Unsuitable Princess: A True Fantasy/A Fantastical Memoir (Jaded Ibis Press). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com.

Chase Dimock

Karaoke in the Valley

The Pianoman has been drinking.
His voice wanders jelly legged
in and out of the speakers
spitting insistent at the chorus. 

Waiting in queue
you believe you will do better
every affected faux British syllable
of a new wave song rehearsed
for maximum effect.
You'll stop the world and melt
with the indifferent conversations
huddled at the tall tables. 

He waits for the last note,
for you to emerge from behind
the pool table stage.
His arm raised, unsure if its arch
of motion is a hug or handshake.
He tells you he heard that song
his first night in West Hollywood
right off the Greyhound from Omaha
before crowds of mustaches and leather
that would thin over the decade. 

He apologizes for the downer.
You understand, but imagine
his mother sitting circled in corn
still waiting for grandchildren your age.
For a moment, you could be
that grandchild. You think of
singing Mack the Knife next,
combing a stiff part in your hair
and appealing whole milk drinking
to a woman invented
just to recognize your voice.

Chase Dimock is an English Professor by trade and he serves as the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be in his spare time. His creative work has been published in Waccamaw, Mayday Magazine, Trailer Park Quarterly, and San Pedro River Review. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and his literary scholarship and criticism have appeared in College Literature, Western American Literature, Modern American Poetry, The Lambda Literary Review, and several edited anthologies.

Robert Balun

Astral Projection

it never seems
to be 

time

  

 

it’s easy to disappear

here or there

 

I don’t remember
exactly
 

where 

 

I eat the dream

 

the luster of future

 

years shimmer
away

 

 

 

 

the light is so different here

 

 

 

I never seem to be

 

who I say I am

 

  

a vibrational absence

 

 

molten time

seeping from

each being

 

 

in the house made of dawn

 

stormed dusk

 

collapsing

 

in the refracted skyline

 

a name

 

slips

 

into history

 

 

            inside the paint is peeling

            you can still hear the music

            the sun

  

 

what will the legacy be

when it is excavated

 

 

what are the prayers

 

 

 

in the sovereign ego

 

 

 

 

in the metaphysical scandal of capital

 

 

 

 

the last of the plans

 

 

 

 

 

was that you

  

was that me

 

 

reaching out into the static

 

 

 

into the live-in deserts

 

  

the face gets blurry

 

dissipates

 

  

in the aeonic

  

 

the future is an exoplanetary

  

 

you fragment into you

 

 

slip through your fingers like flowers

 

a song dissolved in the dawn

  

in all of our heaviness

  

 

forgetting we
are made of light

 

 

ancient and full of magic

 

 

 

I went out again

  

past the umber decades

scattered in atmosphere

 

 

to find possible tomorrows

 

 

searching for bright

 

 

 

until everyone is a piece of everything

Robert Balun is an adjunct at The City College of New York, where he teaches creative writing and composition. His poems have recently appeared in TAGVVERK, Tammy, Prelude, Barrow Street, Poor Claudia, Apogee, Cosmonauts Avenue, and others.

Ryan Clark

Ron

for Ron, Oklahoma

Some locations grow
in a field with the cotton. 

Ron never reached the railroad,
was not enough for a post office.  

What is a community
upon such unsolid use. 

If a school is a stem with leaves,
say this is the life that Ron continues as  

after the children help pick
cotton for the year  

and the fields trust in a kind of
death for awhile. 

Use it to house
families in the sureness  

a name means;
in this we secure our labor. 

A mostly migrant Spanish tongue
weaves the place with the hum of work  

to find a one-room apartment to accept
the sounds of life into a wall. 

When no longer exists
the ceiling the walls  

still stand to show what has
been abandoned in the field.

Once the farms have
been consolidated and  

the hands have become metal
harvesters, the school is  

a location standing empty, is
demolished by a tornado a year on. 

Among the fields as remnant
are thick gray walls 

to welcome the prairie
as a sign of end.

Ryan Clark writes much of his work through a unique method of homophonic translation. His poetry has most recently appeared in Red Earth Review, Ocotillo Review, Flock, Menacing Hedge, and Homonym, and his first book, How I Pitched the First Curve, is forthcoming from Lit Fest Press. He currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Waldorf University in Iowa.

Helga Floros

rebirth.

i’m a white-knuckled dog
trapped in the corner of the room,
trembling like a flagpole in a hurricane. 

caged in flammable skin,
i want to bleed this body dry.
i don’t want to pay for other people’s sins, 

i don’t want to be afraid
of catching my own reflection
and only seeing someone else’s leftovers.  

there is something ugly,
something rotten inside of me,
something planted which i can’t cut out.

Helga Floros is the author of MELODRAMA (ghost city press 2018) and wants everyone to have a good day every day. they have work in occulum, peach mag, tenderness lit, & elsewhere. they tweet @helgafloros.

John Dorsey

Passing Through Leadwood

for Daniel Crocker

just off the ferlin husky highway
i think what would richard hugo
say about this town
that you haven’t screamed
in your sleep
a thousand times before 

fueled by wonder bread & poison
sad songs about tradition & empty storefronts
the ghosts that go away quietly
because they know
that they won’t be missed 

the buildings that crumble
& just slip away
from their foundations 

the houses that look normal
the regret that is bought
& paid for
in generations of blood 

where the sky is a rusted satellite dish
a dirty diaper on the sidewalk
next to the high school  

you & icarus are famous here
like ferlin husky on the wings of a dove 

traveling through the body like cancer 

on its way to somewhere else 

some far away land 

where there is nothing to do
but sing.

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015,) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017).  He is the current Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Erik Fuhrer

The Chase

The apocalypse listens to Janelle Monáe’s Metropolis: Suite 1 (The Chase)
as it walks through the rainforest
Its IPod is circa 2008--vintage
like its own bones:
circa Julius Caesar
                        circa Prometheus
circa the fire that burned way before the Gods
Zeus was real and he was swallowed by the apocalypse
Jesus was not real yet he is the one who is worshipped
instead of the apocalypse
who is backpacking around the world
and may be lying at your doorstep as you read this
Don’t worry   the apocalypse is peaceful when it sleeps

Erik Fuhrer holds an MFA from the University of Notre Dame. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in BlazeVox, Dream Pop Press, Crack the Spine, Maudlin House, Cleaver, and various other venues.

Amanda Earl

Nevermind Nirvana or Burning Lavender, a guided remix

The robot is so happy.
After the kiss, the greasy feel of Brylcreem,
Lavender's blue, dilly dilly, lavender's green,
the taste of Rothman’s King-size large
as tongue enters mouth.
The robot runs.  

The robot’s mother reflects a luminous standard of bloom
to sell this robot a mind to get away when the lights are out.
When you are king, dilly dilly, I shall be queen: 

The robot has found her friends
due to their immense distance from memory. |
The robot is so ugly, but that’s ok.
There are trees the robot doesn’t remember. 

The robot is afraid, afraid of proper names.
The robot cuts her hair.
The robot flaunts her
sexuality.  

The robot breaks the mirror.
Who told you so, dilly dilly, who told you so?
The robot is so lonely but that’s ok.
The robot uprooted a god.
Hey, hey hey.  

The robot sings along.
Her star catalogues  identify others. 
'Twas mine own heart, dilly dilly,
that told me so. 

The robot includes Sunday morning,
outside her original galaxy,
invisible to the most powerful.
The robot couldn’t name a flower.  

Come, my darlings,
as a figment of the broken shards,
as an old memoria.  

For at least a portion of your life,
you shine. Hello!
Take a rest, Perfect styling!
The robot is not scared.
Hello, hello, face.  

The robot wears excessive and
dramatic makeup
as pretty songs.  

The robot is so lonely and
other properties of a carefree vibe.  

At the shopping mall,
the robot doesn’t remember
who found her and took her home.
Call up your men, dilly dilly,
set them to work. 

Clothing and the robot is to blame,
found it hard, it's not what it means. 
Hello, the plot of seduction,
even if the robot disappears, her body
is also determined by society’s rules.   

The robot feels stupid, was expected to be tall
and thin and the robot doesn’t care.  

The choice produces a plot known as denial!
A corset, a well known symbol of gravitational collapse 
of the illusion.
Some with a rake, dilly dilly,
some with a fork.  

The robot doesn’t mind
the emotional aspects, 
her pretty stellar core.
Hello, hello, hello,
expect to be confident,
understand lower moods.  

The dry lavender the robot burns
catches fire. Spring is not sad
and likes to sing along contagious.  

Some to make hay, dilly dilly,
some to thresh corn, the robot wants
the acrid smell, the scent of memory
burnt up, not dissimilar to whiskey.  

Here we have all places.
It is acceptable for us to be 
dangerous. Entertain us.
Whilst you and I, dilly dilly,
keep ourselves warm. We can build
nuclear fusion, and we like ugly,
We've broken our pretty pressure. 

The flame grows high.
the robot watches.
Lavender's green, Dilly dilly,
Lavender's blue. 

The robot’s not gonna crack when tears
are exhausted.[2] 
If you love me, Dilly dilly,
I will love you. 

The robot waits until the flame
is almost out of control,
then smothers it.

Amanda Earl is a Canadian polyamorous poetesse and fiction writer, editor, publisher and visual poet. She’s the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Her goals are whimsy, creation and exploration. More info can be found at AmandaEarl.com. Twitter: @KikiFolle.

Michelle Fisher

Terminus

Route 66 ends at the beginning
of the Santa Monica pier. 

We watched fishermen
still in the dark
on the edges
of the boardwalk, making small
talk, children baiting,
showing off for tube top
lip gloss lovers
held safe between their bodies
and guardrail. 

We watched a car,
white, wide, and low.
Gliding neither toward
nor away, arriving
at the endpoint just
to undo all the motion,
tidal attraction
to the ends of the earth
shifting into sea. 

Route 66 ends
before we realize what we’ve done.

Michelle Fisher is a poet, student, and activist from the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. She is completing her English creative writing degree at Wesleyan University with a poetry thesis about the mythologization of AIDS and New York City in queer history. You can find her @shirahdevorah on Twitter, at michelledfisher.wordpress.com, and anywhere there are cats to be snuggled!

Stephen Briseño

How I’m Feeling Today

If I’m honest, I’m not
what my smile suggests.
I’m more or less less,
a tired middle-aged man
who looks forward to sleep
with a giddiness best
reserved for other things.
This smile is bent
because my back is
but I know though not
for much longer. It will
spread out, rest on my bed, book
opened for a brief bouquet
of minutes before my head
bobs and I wake up to find
I’ve lost my page,
wishing for more time
to read and be giddy
about other things.

Stephen Briseño's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Memoir Mixtapes, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, L'Éphémère Review, formercactus, Barren Magazine, and Rabid Oak. He lives in San Antonio with his wife and daughter, teaches middle school English, and drinks far too much coffee. Follow him on Twitter: @stephen_briseno.

Ben Kline

August Serenade

Tangerine moon rises late like an only child
whose parents revolve their own affairs,

late over those malachite hundred twenty yards
flooded by lights too bright to be celestial, 

an interrupted dusk under which I conceive
cobalt sentiments about chestnut manes 

of wilting cornsilk, late nods at halftime
that catalyze instructions for assignments 

performed behind the women’s restrooms,
Heather squeezing out the stall window  

after halftime pyramid leaps, sweat still
salty on her lips and between her thighs, 

pom-poms dropped next to my knees
on the flat grass, as was planned last week  

in chemistry, giggling through another
experiment in biomechanical reactions, 

and she shudders like a stiff aurous stalk
in the combine’s maw, stripped and  

conveyed to the wire crib to dry as the sun
retreats into shorter days of less anxious 

languor, days that shrivel like tomatoes
or lonely widows too long on the post, 

subjected to bugs or rejected by lovers
far ago who have forgotten their names. 

After the game, at home drafting couplets,
rhymes paused for illicit pours of PBR 

to numb bites that might build character
were I quiet enough to be so Pentecostal, 

I hear the fields sway in the glow, sharp
blades swooshing like a corps of snare drums

brushed for a twisted beat, memories sleep
might rewrite into eventual nostalgia for 

sticky evenings and proven hypotheses,
bats rewriting axioms around the barn, 

eating bloated mosquitos while I note
other symmetries made possible by rhyme.

Ben Kline lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, working at the library and drinking more coffee than seems wise. His work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Offing, Bending Genres Journal, Typehouse Magazine, Beech Street Review, The Matador Review, Impossible Archetype, Love's Executive Order, and many more. You can read more at www.benkline.tumblr.com/publications.

J.B. Stone

The Night I Saw Matt and Kim Live and Felt Reborn in the Limelight

the lights gleamed like the biblical spotlight of heavenly clouds
maybe it was the whisk of melody
the rhythm of the night
how a day’s worth of seeing other bands rock the same stage
kept me full of energy 

not drained of it

the stage opened up like a neon prism pavilion
anthems about happy kids
trying to find hope
on a dying planet 

forged from a force of electric movement

symphonic serenades
& synth-pop circle pits 

drum-beat break sessions
& crowd surfer wipeouts 

with tears running down my cheekbone
I hugged my friend Danielle 

after such a bittersweet year
depression trigger after depression trigger 

I was alive for what felt
like the first time in a long time 

music is incredible like that I guess
the ability to accomplish 

what ten years of
prescribed anti-depressants couldn’t

J.B. Stone is an emerging poet/fiction writer from Brooklyn, now residing in Buffalo. He has poetry, prose and flash fiction featured in Peach Mag, Occulum, Cadaverous Mag, Anti-Heroin Chic, Riggwelter Press, Crack the Spine and several other publications. He also has a micro-chapbook out, A Place Between Expired Dreams and Renewed Nightmares (Ghost City Press, 2018).

Amy Alexander

Star Wars episode IV: A New Hope

In all of the versions of this story,
the boy with the blond scruff
looks out at two suns. 

In later editions,
some of the creatures are new.
They stumble against the weight
of an impractical existence,
and I guess we reached that point, too. 

Sometimes, my memory takes one--
a monster who looked like a man,
and places a walking lizard in its place. 

Over time, the lizard becomes
so large, he won’t be able to move.
Later, I will kill him with a chain,
while wearing a tin bikini,
but this is now,
and he is only a man, walking,
sometimes in tawny scales,
but always a wide, leering mouth
and glass eyes that want
in a way that usually disappears with age,
but not always. 

There is argument over which grotesque guy
shot first in the bar,
but we are years later,
and many children have been born who do not wonder
how bad the scoundrels of history might have been,
see only swagger,
and if I tell them about us,
will they believe you hurt me,
or that you were James Dean? 

Because both might be true.
A man is a lizard.*
A man shoots first.*
A man is hot like stones
under multiple desert suns.*               *They are the same man.

Star Wars episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Only in the worm’s belly
was she able to let go. 

Girls who come from violence
find it later,
as their boots sink into some
stomach lining far from home
(home being exploded)
as they are thrown through space. 

Under rocks,
they sense a soft bed
and fall forward.
Then there is acid in the bath,
and they flee,
only to forget the sting-- 

Celebrate the steel bones
that trauma built in them.

Star Wars episode VI: Return of the Jedi

My forest is in me,
I think she would agree. 

I, too, have soft animals there,
and will remove armor
and let my hair drop.

Hanging huts for houses,
every idea or image has one,
and could exist without me,
but are made whole by my tending. 

They sing strange songs in the trees
as best fights worst
in another part of the woods. 

I let them toil with their atomic swords
and know better than to intervene. 

Young women fall in love
and see the world made new. 

After a generation,
the crone watches the wars
start over again
and feels foolish. 

She should have stayed
in the shelter.

Amy Alexander is a word tinkerer and visual artist who lives in Louisiana, but longs for the west. Her work has appeared or will be appearing in Memoir Mixtapes, Riggwelter, A Twist in Time, Three Drops in a Cauldron, and Split Lip Review. Her books, The Legend of the Kettle Daughter and The House You Carry Inside You are forthcoming from The Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2019. Follow her on Twitter @iriemom.

Marissa Glover

EQUIVOCATION

You can tell me Trump colluded with the Russians
and nine times out of ten, I’ll picture Mikhail
Baryshnikov in black milliskin tights and tight
white shirt, strutting into secret meetings
with his brisés volés and grands jetés.
You can tell me to be serious—
that Putin is a dangerous man, and I’ll imagine
Ivan Drago beating Rocky Balboa’s face to a pulp.
The truth is what we make of it.  

My therapist says I should delete my Twitter.
It’s a trigger, each tweet a reminder
of the ways bullies twist words into weapons.
Again, Trump lies and I catastrophize:
Bridges fall into oceans, I’m flooded
with apocalyptic emotions, carried
where conversations earn glittered belts—
bruises, welts—these heavyweight bouts,
his teasing mouth. The tongue’s a trickster.
I swallow balls of cotton until I’m stuffed
like the doll boxed in the closet, her thin lips
an X sewn in red stitches, wedded to silence.

Marissa Glover teaches writing at Saint Leo University, hosts Friday Night Open Mic, and was recently named an editor at The Lascaux Review. Marissa shares her thoughts more than necessary, which she considers a form of charitable giving. If it counted as a tax deduction, she’d be rich. Her work has appeared inGyroscope Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, and After the Pause, among others. Follow her on Twitter @_MarissaGlover_.

Gabrielle Grace Hogan

poem to be read without anyone else in the room

in the shower my libido growls         like a thick-throated bear           my muscles under this heat
rattle                       & unrope         pearlescent soap suds                drape my genitals in jewels

like a toxic algae bloom            my pubic hair folds       into the wet            of an anonymous lake
in this case your sweat             which i don’t name       for fear you’ll know     it’s yours

tomorrow’s genderless god       won’t punish us for this       but they will eat us whole          limb
from succulent limb                   i don’t even like sex           or have it all that much              but

sex poems             are the most fun to write          when i keep you         where the mouth makes
an O                       in ejaculation or in grief            nothing’s hotter          than a paradox

a möbius strip         down of morals & prom dresses         riddled with mothballs    like bullets
in a closet door       in my greatest fantasy i throw            our voices to the sky        to be melted

into milky pink plumes         my throat seized                  by fingernail beds         blue as a vein
waiting to be cut                   as all the beautiful things        at the bottom of           the ocean

 
there are too many           beautiful things                at the bottom of         the ocean         
if you hollow it out           how many beautiful things     will you kill                 we should

 
wash ourselves in them             we should go there is only         so much time                to drown

Gabrielle Grace Hogan is a poet from St. Louis, Missouri. Her work has been published by or is forthcoming in Sonora Review, Spiral Orb, LEVELER, The Penn Review, and others. In 2017, she won Bradley University's chapter of the Academy of American Poets' University & College Prize for her poem "pools." She is currently pursuing her bachelor's in Creative Writing, with plans to pursue an MFA upon graduation. Her website is gabriellegracehogan.tumblr.com, where you can find links to all of her social media and also poems.

Lillian Sickler

let me tell you about the hypnic jerk

a loss
of my limbs
each night to jolt and chaos 

this falling       as I see you 

in blurry firework
neurons going off
in the attic
of my skull 

            that football field in Atlanta, rocky road
            ice cream, more brown eyes
            milk duds
            dissolving, a cord
            of endless gerunds  

I only fear dust that settles. 

falling
is because of gravity
the root
of a black hole. 

if dreams
are rabbit holes, then each night
everyone follows the white rabbit
as we close
our eyes and slip
off the sheet 

with a shake, I reach
the missing particle,
the last day of summer, the tree you loop
your arms around        the girl on the moon
who will live   forever. 

I fall and see dogs
running through craters
hunting for moon-rabbits 

their bodies jumping
                        and jerking
as they slip
and land
down
the rabbit hole

Lillian Sickler has been writing poems since she was 12. She recently graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Comparative Literature and is working on her first poetry book. She has been published in Asterism, Cosmonauts Avenue and Drunk In a Midnight Choir.

Amy Lauren

Insoluble

Her gift to me unsolvable,
a steady heartbeat thick with blood,
recognizable quiet, full speech bubbles
above a sea of strangers. We cross paths,
railroads, wavering map contours
that encircle joints, street corners
where we meet and become a little more
like each other. 

If I managed to love her,
somewhere in landscape’s dermatology
there blushes a tingling echo concealed
as birdcall. If in harmless studies
of passing-by, we inflicted loneliness
on one another, a canyon has closed,
a soul dimmed, disguised
as night. 

My gift to her insoluble,
a canticle melts down a phone line,
promises of fidelity, roses awaiting arrest
in the web of a flower-shop. We dislocate
faces, landmarks, jumbled harmonies
of untraceable laughter. We form collages
that endure—choruses of our soul’s refrains,
kisses collected on our collarbones—
hoping our histories dissolve.

A graduate of Mississippi College, Amy Lauren authored Prodigal (Bottlecap Press, 2017) and God With Us (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her poetry appears in The Gay & Lesbian Review, Cordite Poetry Review, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. Drop her a line at amylaurenwrites.com.

M. de la Rosa

Eel 1

once you had a dream:
oceans, and sunken cities
written on your feet. 

you’ve marked horizons
written your own directions,
systems of belief 

everyone’s sleeping
the nightlight is comforting
only something's changed. 

make my make-believe
close my eyes so I can see
what I really want

 

 

you know what you are

crushing force of memory

tell me why you're here.

Eel 2

she's breaking from home
it's not that she walked away,
her world got smaller 

 

across the ceiling
pomegranate afternoons
drift and fly away  

 

the air was singing
now is greater and she knows
with a sweet resign

  

it's like if summers
remind us of how, when, why
to live life on high 

 

she's off on her own
she just wants to be somewhere.
she just wants to be.

Eel 3

I spent half my life
headfirst fighting everything
no one wants to cry 

 

I spent half my life
trying to look like you don't try
like i'm not afraid 

 

rain came down on me
when I swim I fly so high
If I sink I sink. 

 

This is all I need
I just needed to believe
I'll finally win.

M. de la Rosa is an editor, translator, curator, radio producer, poet and film programmer from Mexico. They run the Poetry Spotlight series on UK-based zine GOD IS IN THE TV, and their work as a music and film critic has appeared on Passion of the Weiss, Noisey, Film Inquiry, The Young Folks, and The Singles Jukebox. You can find them on Twitter @issue_666.

Chloe Williamson

The Body Monstrous

I sing the body monstrous
The body rusted, creaking
The body sick from salt water
I sing the body that does not float
Limbs heavy with the reality of being
The radiating heat of sunburned shoulders
The sudden crack of lip, split
Every stain left accidentally in a favorite pair of underwear
I sing the body bloody, and bloated
The body covered thickly with hair
I sing the body unrepentant
The body sweaty, flushed
The body guiltless and slick in its wanting
I sing the body of bruised knees
Delicately scabbed-over mosquito bites
Embossed impressions left by ill-fitting jeans
I sing the body frightened
The body hidden, the body hiding
The body that shudders at both touch and sunlight
I sing the unnavigable mystery and shame of the body
The song of that which will not be consumed

Chloe Williamson's poetry and prose has previous appeared in The Wellesley Review, El Portal, Brushfire Literature and Arts Journal, The Rising Phoenix Review, and West Texas Literary Review. She tweets @c_m_williamson.