Category: Issue #22

I pull tee-shirts
off my skin. A woman looks
at me the way the angled mirrors fracture
my body into a thousand kaleidoscopic
petals. I never found desire
hiding under rows
of dresses. My mind wanders
back to a time when I etched stick figures
into worn school desks. Stiff bodies, lines
for clothing, ungendered. I don’t mean
to philosophize at you—

but a sneer follows
the woman’s voice
in Alexander’s department store
when she questions
me     Are you in the right
dressing room      trying to size up
my body parts under a winter jacket
and loose jeans. Out of style, I’d like to pass
over this life as a sparrow, blending in
with grasses & weeds. If a sparrow is confused
by its reflections, staring at a prism
with distorted images, would it believe
it shouldn’t exist or that it has another
self, hidden beneath its feathers?

 

Carla S. Schick is a queer, nonbinary social justice activist. Their writings are inspired by the complexities of jazz to get at emotions in the intersections of political and personal events. They stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their anti-colonial struggle. Their writings can be found in Sinister Wisdom, Fourteen Hills, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Qu, Querencia Press, and anthologized in Colossus: Body. They are a 2023 recipient of a SF Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award. They are forever grateful to the professors at Berkeley City College with whom they studied, earning a Certificate in Poetry.

I think there’s a ghost in my spirits. 

My whisky, my wine, my gin, my scotch. 

There is a ghost in my spirits and I think I drank part of its finger the other night when I poured myself a glass of Merlot and sat on my couch and stared at my ceiling from 11:37pm to 1:11am. I don’t really know if ghosts can have fingers. I don’t even know if ghosts are in the shape of human beings or if they’re shapeless masses or if they’re even real. I didn’t believe in ghosts until now. If I even believe in them. But I think I do because the ghost in my spirits was inhabiting the bottle of Merlot I poured myself a glass from, and I think it’s finger was poured into my glass because as I sipped and stared I felt a tickle in my throat that I’d never felt before.

There’s the tickle in your throat that arises when you have to cough. That’s a simple feeling and one that’s easily identifiable.

There’s the tickle in your throat that arises when you’re about to let out a sob. That’s a gruesome feeling and one you try to swallow down.

There’s the tickle in your throat that arises when you are at a loss for words. That’s a breathless feeling and one more complex than coughing.

Then there’s this tickle. The tickle of swallowing a ghost’s finger. It’s a mix of all three of the previously mentioned tickles with a dash of burning. It also sticks. Coughing and sobbing and breathlessness can eventually be expelled from your body. This tickle, however, would not leave. It felt like an insect had lodged in my larynx and was not obstructing my breathing, but was wriggling with a vengeance. I tried to ignore it as I finished the glass, but I couldn’t shake it until the next afternoon.

Tonight I’m drinking a gin and tonic and watching a television show where a girl wants to find a guy but she has a secret and I wish I could tell you more but honestly I just put this on to have some background noise. This gin and tonic is fine but I think now I’ve gotten the ghost’s ear. I feel like I’m hearing more than usual within my house. Not just the random show but also the house settling and the carpet fibers on the rug being rustled in a high definition way. I hear a spider that has just caught my eye walking across my coffee table. Each of its legs are tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tapping across the wood. Normally any sight of a spider is enough to launch me towards the closest tissue or towel so I can squash the fucker, but I can’t help but stare at it and listen to it’s legs tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.

I wonder if this ghost cares that I have accidentally consumed part of its being. I don’t know if I would care if I was a ghost and someone was consuming me. Then again, it’s the ghost’s fault for deciding to camp out in my spirits. It is free to roam around the house if it really wants to.

I think my phone just buzzed. 

I’m checking it and it looks like I have a couple of messages. Nothing special, just a text from my mom telling me she has some sprouts growing in her vegetable garden and a picture from Hannah of her kitten playing with yarn. Hannah has never had a maternal instinct, but all of a sudden this kitten has turned her into the most protective parent I’ve ever met. The kitten wandered out the other day somehow and decided to take a nap on the front steps of her house in the sun, and when Hannah discovered the cat wasn’t in the house she called me hysterically sobbing and continued to sob for an hour until her boyfriend came home with the kitten under arm and asked how it had gotten out of the house.

I think the gin is finally fogging my vision and clouding my mind. I feel myself mentally wandering. I feel my ears becoming more and more overwhelmed as I hear far too much for my own good. I think I need to lie down. I should go lie down.

My stairs are rickety and basically broken. The apartment I rent sounds fancy on paper: loft apartment. Loft. What a seductive word. You know what’s not seductive? Stairs that creak even when nobody’s walking on them. A ceiling above my bed that’s sprung numerous leaks. Wallpaper so cracked and torn it’s scratched up your arms on multiple occasions. My apartment is essentially just a series of shambles constructed in a way that resembles shelter. I’ve scraped enough together over the years to pay rent and consume what some may constitute enough food to survive and of course buy liquor. I really don’t need luxury, liabilities can serve a similar purpose.

My mom hates this place. She’s visited twice, and the second time she broke the fourth toe on her left foot on a loose tile in the kitchen floor and proceeded to weep, not because of the pain, but because she didn’t understand why I had moved out into such a shitty place. She kept saying, “I don’t understand, you’d be safer with me. Come back and live with me, Carson” It’s a nice enough sentiment but since May got in that car accident in June I haven’t had a reason to stay there. 

Besides, I think mom’s losing it. My name’s not Carson.

I like the way gin makes my face flush. If you can follow this thought, wine makes the apples of your cheeks flush. But gin makes my whole face flush, with a pink strike extending across the bridge of my nose and dabbling my forehead with small specks. It makes me feel like a feather whereas wine makes me feel like a fiend. You’d think it’d be the other way around, but I don’t know. I’m just telling it how I feel it. I like feeling how May felt the night before graduation when she drank half a bottle of Bombay Sapphire and then forgot she’d drank half a bottle of Bombay Sapphire when I’d called crying after I found out dad had discovered I was back home for summer break and had come back just to burn all my clothes and try to threaten mom into letting him come back. She must have felt so fuzzy and light as her front bumper wrapped around that tree.

I’m crawling into bed and I hear the dust molecules whirring around the floor. I kind of feel sorry for the ghost, and wonder if it’s both annoyed that I drank its ear and grateful I’ve relieved it of half of it’s loud existence. I would hate to be both dead and stuck with perpetual HD hearing.

I wonder why a ghost would take up company with me. Sure, this house is creepy and run-down but other than that it’s not exactly a fun apartment to haunt. It’s not May, either, don’t be basic. I would know if it was May. May would leave little signs or something. She used to leave me little presents in my room when I’d had a bad day. I would never tell her, she would just guess. And she was always right. I had a lot of shitty days as a kid. And a teenager. And as a twenty-something. My existence is shitty? Maybe that’s why there’s a ghost lurking in my household, hiding in my spirits. Why a ghost has any interest in alcohol is beyond me. Can a ghost get drunk? Maybe. Maybe it’s just nice to be in a confined little space. Less nice when someone drinks part of you, but, you should figure it comes with the territory. 

May hated confined spaces. That’s another reason I know this isn’t her. She loved open fields and gloated over having the biggest room which she knew she only got because she was the baby.

May bought me the first piece of clothing that I actually liked. My parents always got the cut and color of my clothes wrong. And by parents I mean mom. Dad was kicked out when May was a senior in high school and I was a freshman in college. Not that that stopped him from coming to the house and burning the clothes May got me. Still, he was kicked out. He wasn’t supposed to be there.

There’s this weird rustling under my bed. Not the dust, that’s a different rustling. That rustling is like a shhhhshshshshshshhh.

This is more like a crchshcruchs.

What is that.

Wait.

What is that?

There’s a child under my bed now. There are ghosts in my spirits and now there’s a child under my bed. I see a small fists curled up and tiny beady eyes peeking out back from the darkness and peering into mine.

“Hey.”

The child is still staring at me. A curl falls into its eyes. I think I recognize that curl, but I don’t know why.

“Hey, you don’t have to hide under there if you don’t want.”

I have no experience with the supernatural so if this is some demon and I’m inviting into my home well, then, oops I guess. I just need this rustling to stop, it’s getting loud. There’s also this clicking noise now. I haven’t heard that since my dad would clip his nails in the bathroom and then grab my hands and clip my nails and tell me they were unkempt and no one likes someone with unkempt nails. I think this child is making that noise. I notice one hand is retracted and after every click there is now the sound of a soft spit and from that spit a nail appears. 

“You shouldn’t bite your nails. No one is going to make you clip them if you want to let them grow.”

The child stops. The child inches forward.

“Can I get you a snack?”

No movement.

“Do you want water?”

Nothing.

“Want to see a cool rock?”

That’s fucking silly I know that’s fucking silly but that gets the child to come out. I’ve had this rock that May picked up from the beach one summer and gave to me because it had tiny little glittery bits. I’ve brought that rock with me everywhere I’ve ever lived. The child walks towards it slowly, but looks impressed with the glitter when I pick up the rock and move it around.

“Wanna hold it?”

It nods. I hold it out, and the child takes it.

I notice there is a finger missing from a finger.

I stare. And stare. And stare. And then look closer. And closer. And closer. And then, finally, I recognize the hair and eyes and freckles on the bridge of the nose and the overalls I loved so much when he was six because it was the only clothing item I owned that didn’t make me feel weird.

“Oh.”

I brush the child’s hair back and notice it’s ear is gone.

“What were you doing hiding in the wine and gin?”

The child shrugs. “You weren’t looking anywhere else.”

“It’s been hard to focus on anything else.”

“I didn’t like it there.”

I laugh. Of course he didn’t.

“I’m sorry I drank your finger and ear.”

“It’s okay. I won’t need them much longer.”

“Oh?”

The child sits down criss-cross. It tosses the rock back and forth between it’s palms.

“Why do you keep remembering me?”

Jesus. What kind of question is that. “Um…because sometimes I wonder what would happen if you had never been born. And sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you had never changed. And I wonder if you ever could have done something to save May.”

I was wearing a dress the night May died. The first dress I had ever received. And that night my father showed up because he heard I was back home and that was the first time I’d been back home since I told him I wasn’t his son anymore and that if he couldn’t accept me as his daughter he couldn’t be part of my life and he spit at me and called me names that blurred together and I left before he was finished because I wasn’t going to take that. Mom said that I didn’t have to take it. May said I didn’t have to take it.

Maybe I should have taken it.

I didn’t realize I had been speaking this out loud.

I feel a hand on my leg.

“It’s okay.”

“Could I have stopped it?”

“You?”

“…We? Could we have stopped it?”

“No. But I don’t think we were supposed to.”

I feel a tickle in my throat and the moon streaming into my room makes a searing sound as it hits my bedspread. I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I’ve been in this shitty apartment for too long. “Is this actually happening?”

“I think so.”

“You do?”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I hope it’s not.”

“Then we probably think it is.”

We.

We.

I’m looking at myself before I came to May heartfelt one night and told her I thought I was someone else but I didn’t have the language to articulate so instead she just let me cry on her shoulder and bought me a dress and after that we didn’t have to speak about it because we knew and my mother had silently always known so my hair and nails grew and I wore more and more dresses until my father came and burned them all and –

“I miss May.”

“Yes.”

“I miss her.”

“I know.”

“You don’t speak like a child.”

“I speak however you think I speak.”

“I think you speak like me.”

“Then I speak like you.”

“I’m sorry I’ve dragged you along for so long.”

The child nods. “It’s okay. But sooner or later I’ll have to leave.”

“When?”

“When can you forget her and forgive him?”

I stare at the fingerless earless former version of myself and stare and stare and hear the moonlight sear and feel my throat constrict and expand and stare and stare and don’t know.

“What are you thinking about?”

“How you shouldn’t hide in my liquor cabinet”

“Okay. I won’t anymore.”

“Okay.”

“I like your dress, by the way, Connie. I like that we’re wearing those now.”

“Thank you.”

The next morning I wake up, hungover and looking ghostly. I don’t think I’m going to drink tonight. Just in case the ghost ends up in my spirits again by accident. 

 

Lizz Mangan (they/them) is a playwright, dramaturg, and educator who focuses on queering theater in subject and structure. Lizz’s work has been produced by companies such as The Tank, Gadfly Theatre, American Stage Theatre Company, and more across the country. Lizz’s Play Strike/Out will be published by 1319 press in 2025. When not writing, Lizz can be found bowling or falling into various internet rabbit holes. lizzmangan.com.

I treat Tuesday nights like
free voice training, and
Boy, do I practice–
every week 
a new song, every month
a new pitch, attempts to save 
a wasted gift. The
next day, think of
which way I’ll throwback
to a supposed simpler time.
My Escape is my studio
my commute a family reunion:
a karaoke room of my own. I drive
My inner child,
let the tomboy choose the track
s/he wants to sing
now that our cousins aren’t around.
There’s a song in our heart that
I need excised, cuz
when I sing Reflection 
I can’t help but cry

                                  Look at me–
                                  I will never pass

are just lyrics on my phone
when I glance at a red light—
as if the words weren’t waiting for me
twenty years tucked away 
in a music box
with who I am inside.
As if Tita Lea isn’t singing
to pogi bois who will never pass
to secret first-born
Sons seeking wisdom from
Ancestors without a shrine.
The Queen and I 
duet on a highway
dotted with rain. 

I wipe my eyes and fight
The urge to cut my hair on stage.

 

Toni Garcia-Butler (he/they) is a poet and community artist. His work centers his people: Black, Filipino, southern, trans/queer, and everyone existing within their intersections. You can find them at tgbpoetry.com.

what I do,  say,  imagine,  
we are black, capital B, lowercase b, 
another name for a nigga 
                               which means: not to be
that when a person doesn’t see a body–
flesh stirs; spirit is exchanged on the market 
in a Shakespearean fourth act staring hell’s devils 
over them salty Atlantic waters waves green like dollar 
Bills with dead men’s posing on the front crashing against 
the shore as a ching-a-ling ring for every star
that hasn’t fallen, proof the world is a plantation 
there will always be a first black from king’s dream to lead us out the hull though we already landed. because if i were not here my country would make me from scratch: bones thin, 
mud skin, hair so tight it don’t blow in the wind
a delectable delight for all to hate, the sweet taste of modernity.  

first, comes the first black, who used to be a slave?
in fact, isn’t that the second black, secondly negro, 
then the third version: 
pro-black, joy black, magic black, afro-black
                               which means: take what is given
i do laugh more when i’m wrong than right, love my friends when 
death skips me over, i have a heart that beats throughout the day into the night. the mundane yields little to the debt 
assigned to an object trying to say: 
                               What is enough?
when lack sits in the corner letting air out while being filled
when i talk it always ruins the picture within the frame 
no matter the color of the blue sky, the green of the itchy blades
of grass, the pink of your tongue matching the inside of me 
between the way we find to be fine is always fleeting from black to white, only gray in the moment never after.

what is left, i write as truth but understand it to be a lie; 
haven’t you heard, we free? they said we can be whatever we like. 

 

Christian M. Ivey (he/they), is a black nonbinary trans writer, editor, and art director from Pontiac, Michigan. their work interrogates the mundane to illuminate how blackness is overdetermined by social death via kinships. Christian had edited issue NO. 28 themed on Belonging of FIYAH Literary Magazine and the forthcoming HEXAGON SF MYRIAD Zine themed on Kinship. Christian is also, the Art Director for FIYAH Literary Magazine, Associate Editor at Tenebrous Press’ Skull & Laurel, and the Digital Communications Specialist at the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley.

FULL-FRONTAL THREAD COUNT

            For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. 
            Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I 
            have been fully known.           1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV

All the words I’ve got unspecify. Misconstrue 
& misconstruct. Okay, she fucked me 

until unlanguage, until all sorts of things 
sounded good, but to write it is another story: 

you’ve already misunderstood. Well, what if I said 
perversion, genuine goddamn thrill of twist, 

standards bunched up in my fists like sheets.
Sundial sex: it’s all in the shadow. Earth-curl

& flattered flinch, unspectacled tableau,
return to dirt / depths / ambiguity. Re-

dim me. Know me in part — in thigh & tongue, 
in ass & tit & lens — there’s just one act

on offer, her dream whatever. Stone hot
bitch mirror. I’ve never read a poem 

that fucked like us (underwear on) (her balls 
against my cunt) (in some phantom rhythm 

spirit desperate pulse) (they used to call this 
dyking) (I think some mornings, an echo lurch

that never quite grasps) so if I said I subsist
some nights off the dip of her hip like I could lap

water carefully from its curve, would it matter less 
how many verbs I reject for our failure to convey 

the grace & grossness with which she again 
obscures me beyond any hope of disunion?

 

SEMIOLOGY: RESTLESSNESS

It’s probably a (sub)cultural trait, to be into people who’re hot for your nails. She calls the photo of me fully clothed and clawed a nude, and it’s like someone has spoken my name for the first time. My thoughts keep orbiting the interaction, less passive than predatorial, lithe and hungry in a way that’s at odds with the routine of my body. 

Let’s not skirt around it: I am much more used to being hunted. I limp back from the appointment at which another doctor casts himself carnivore to my crying wolf and, when I have no howl left, turn instead to the bite of a new coffin on each finger, the first half of a ritual against dying. 

The second, that there exists a body that will do as I ask. As much as I believe in and affirm meaningless sex, the truth is, it’s never not been important to me, and this is no different: the dagger of my nail against my clit and the way she begs for them both in her mouth, the sweat-sheened and trembling reminder of what it’s like to be listened to. My arm takes off on its own exorcism-resistant rhythm, embodied litany of I want, I want, I want—this meter that drew every eye in the waiting room, incessant no matter how my muscles ache, and one I no longer want to fight.

Call it dystonia or chorea or hysteria, call it cockblock, call it getting creative. Sex on my terms is so full of her stillness I forget to swallow, but not to breathe, and that’s the difference between this co-constructed power and that all too real one. I’ve got nothing but awe when she says she needs the imprint of my teeth in her throat—our mockery of nature, our mutual subversion of the cripple who simply takes what they are given. Give me a bear-trap body and a lover who knows exactly what they’re getting into. Give me a lover who longs to serve as a scratching post and a sound effect as I unsheath my index finger. Give me a couple hours and an internet connection and I’ll finally eat my fill.

 

Mac Wilder (ze/zem/zyrs or any pronouns) is a homebound high femme whose work explores queercrip sexuality, high-control Christianity, & their intersection. Zyr work is forthcoming in Sinister Wisdom, manywor(l)ds.place, and Corporeal. Zyr self-published chapbooks and zines can be found at justfor.fans/assonance.

Love, our bigness is a gift. We are massively magnificent as we are. 
Told to exercise our bodies as if demons & I am so tired of running 
to lose myself. There will be no more dying to diet. I do not desire chasers 
& am no longer chasing after silhouettes nor wild fowl nor paper-thin nor rainbows-end. 
Forever yes fats yes fems yes queer yes trans! We reclaim any shame from the names obese 
& overweight. Yes chunky & chubby! Yes portly & pudgy! Yes heavy & husky! Yes yes yes! 
Our corpulence is elegant. We bask in the auras of our largeness. Come & sit. Grab a handful 
of ass & yes there’s much more to handle. Titty in your mouth is a sweet word, never pejorative. 
I find in you so many good words: handsome, stunning, wonderful, cute, pretty, hot, gorgeous–
Love, you extend my vocabulary with your expansiveness. We’ve been force fed falsehoods 
about shrinking & smallness, yet we contain such abounding abundance. Attractiveness 
is your body, yes, as well as your caring kindness, careful consideration. There will be 
no more sighs upon our size, only our own honor upon our release & reveal, yes! Yes & 
fat phobias too. So much yes & no felt in the body, it is okay to be scared & sad & mad
at these systems that dismiss our pains & hold us under the knife. We are still here, still holding
each other– not cropped out, no, more crop tops & muffin tops, bikini bottoms & bottoms up, yes
in any season we please! Love, we have beautiful bodies. We are more than our bodies 
& our bodies are more to love. We sit naked in front of each other, belly to belly, 
thunder thighs & lightning strikes. We make our own sky of stretch mark constellations 
& starry eyes full of moon. Love, we are so much yes, why would we want to be any less?

 

Aerik Francis (they/them) is a Queer Black & Latinx poet & teaching artist born & based in Denver, CO. Aerik is the author of the poetry chapbook, BODYELECTRONIC (Trouble Department 2022). Their second chapbook MISEDUCATION was named as the winner for the 2022 New Delta Review Chapbook Contest and was published in May 2023. Aerik has released an experimental audiobook project for their chapbook BODYELECTRONIC under their artist name phaentom[poet] that is available on all streaming platforms. Find more of their work on their website phaentompoet.com and find them on social media @phaentompoet.

Before I was a baby, I was a beautiful idea.
The salvation of a Jersey girl whose limbs hung
grotesquely draped in berry-blue defiance whipped
in all white till her dress frayed and fell cherry-stained
on the long walk home. A Brooklyn boy’s respectable
manifest destiny as he sprouted upwards toward the
heavens from a roach-infested tinsel tower varnished
in my grandfather’s secrets. I was part and parcel,
the means of production. I could make a dream
so American it’d twinkle like onyx
buffed and chiseled into a vanity so reflective,
they could almost see themselves in me.
& then I was ugly.

One does not become ugly overnight, there is a context
for such monsterfication; it takes a learned imperfection.
Cracked teeth in a mouth that insists upon staying open
and so much self you spill out of yourself. You become
the answer to questions no one ever planned on asking like:
How are you yo daddy’s son when you’supposed to be
a daughter? Couldn’t you color yourself lighter in every hue?
Couldn’t you walk lighter than a feather,
instead of this hulking beast, a blight, refusing
to be the beautiful through-thread of this story? 
And who the fuck do you think you are
being this ugly and unabashed?

And then I was hands and snap and sparkle
puppeteering in the morning light.
And then I was boy, embodied
and benevolent. And then I was handsome, hanging
on your every word. And then I was gravel voice
and gray-evening-haloed in tobacco
& then I was beautiful again.

I couldn’t keep pretending I wasn’t. Lips berried
with vulgar smarts. A fifth of whiskey easy
on the way down. A baby-eyed big talker.
One does not become beautiful overnight.
There is a ceremony in this release.
There is grief in the cutting away of flesh.
In the leap from the jetty. It is an ugly feeling, truly,
to touch your own beauty for the first time and realize
how many years you denied yourself to yourself.
How you foraged and flailed and reached for the things
furthest from your own face,
catching fistfuls of nothing but the quiet.
How you believed in a god
not strong enough to see themselves in you.

How you let them make you into a monster,
or a fantasy, or salvation
like you weren’t an offering.
Like you weren’t conjured from the people
in every corner of the planet. 
Like you might spend your whole life
apologizing for the things they could not hold,
for all of the ways in which you are wayward.

But mostly, for making them into lies–liars.
How you never saw what they saw when they saw you.
How you never defined the sun by the way it looks
dipping below the horizon, never allowed the thunderclap
to scare you from summer rains.
How you gave up being someone’s idea of ugly.
How maybe you were never good at pretending.

 

Kelsey L. Smoot (they/them/he/his) is a gender theorist, a committed Southerner, a writer, and a poet. Their work and writings explore the process of identity formation at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality. Selfhood and cultural constraints—such as masculinity and its associated expectations—coalesce in their writing. Their autoethnographic style has become a lens through which they understand their personal experience traversing the US sociopolitical landscape. Having grown up bicoastal and spending the majority of their adult life in a state of transience, Kels draws from his eclectic life experiences both deep fear and great optimism regarding what people are capable of. This tension is reflected in his published writing which can be found in Barely South Review, The Guardian, HuffPost, Voicemail Poems, The Amistad, and at their website, queerinsomniac.me When not writing, Kels can be found performing at The Space (a premiere open-mic based in Kennesaw, Georgia), perusing an antique store, or running the streets with their bois.

Mads Lupold is a nonbinary collage artist, production designer, and writer based in Austin, Texas. When they aren’t giving themselves paper cuts, they work with children at spilled milk social club and create flowers out of scrap records for Gold Rush Vinyl. Mads also works on local film sets creating environments out of props, set design/decorating, and costuming. They write anything from children’s cooking shows to apocalyptic body horror in their free time. Their art centers around whimsy, discomfort, childhood, lack of bodily control, and whatever else they are feeling in the moment. Mads can be found on instagram at @madjoy42.

Delusionship Bingo

Picasso! Paint red flags green.	45 minutes late to the date that isn’t a date.	They’re just friends with their ex.	Being the more interesting half of your conversations.	They have a lot going on* *note: anything that requires clarification can be considered a lot going on.
Intimacy beginning and ending at the closeness of your skin.	. I should get this for them!	I love you  before the first argument.	Speaking honestly only after you’ve swallowed spirits braver than you.	Butterflies! or Anxiety!
Checking your phone every two minutes for a text you won’t receive for two hours  or two days.	They’re soo cute! (true)	Free Space! For your childhood.	Covertly checking their instagram.	Underestimating your self worth.
Random bouts of jealousy.	Making them a playlist.	Sex Fantasies.	They’re not into labels	Intense fear of dying alone.
Wanting. Wanting more.   Wishing you were enough.	Thriving on Praise.	Hey Siri, play Why Don’t You Love Me by Beyoncé.	Always texting first.	Canceling plans to make time for them. Time for them becoming Time.

Nnenna Loveth Umelo Uzoma Nwafor (they/she) is an Igbo lesbian poet, performer, and facilitator. Their work explores Black g*rlhood, Black queerness, Igbo Cosmology, Sensual play and rituals of healing. Nnenna published their debut chapbook, Already Knew You Were Coming, with Game Over Books in January of 2022 and has also been featured on Button Poetry, WBUR’s ARTery, VIBEs Magazine, and Ujima #Wire. When they speak, their ancestors are pleased. Please follow their work on IG @pleasure.as.compass or at pleasurearthealing.com

And on the twelfth night, they said watch out we’ve got a biter.                 
                         And so I woke up on my twentieth birthday in no one’s bed but my own
and I’m certain it’s because of who I was when I was blonde. I think your dad     
caught me trying to exorcize hindsight last time I was over at your house because nothing
haunts me more than knowing the things I could have done differently                       
if only I had 20/20 vision. I think that freaked your dad out and not just because he’s    
walking McCarthyism and I’m gayer than the literary canon.                              
I’ve always had a sweet tooth for libel within reason and a heart made of
biodegradable straws now and then and now you’re all fascists but I can’t say      
that you are because that’s not polite and I’ve been trying my best to be polite     
since I started wearing that God damn cone-like someone’s ball-less dog.             
     You’d hate to feel like that, wouldn’t you? I don’t think you could
pull it off, not like I can. When you can pull off calves that aren’t pretty enough
to be saved from becoming a half-eaten burger you can pull off anything.                 
              When I drive with you in shotgun,  I can see you pull on                                                      
 the grab handle when it’s my mom’s red minivan.                                         
you laugh at me when I say even that’s political. Similar to how America is the
best country in the world like how the used car dealership off Calle Rojo has the
best Hondas. If you had it your way I would have become normal the minute
I walked out of that bathroom stall. The one where you wrote your
phone number when we were freshmen in spirit.
And I knew then that I had no intention of ruining your life but
Then again…when in Rome.

 

Merlin June Mack (they/them) is a hemiplegic writer from Southern California. When they aren’t writing they can be found reading a book with at least one good literary motif in it. Merlin has been previously published in magazines such as The Lavender Review and Does It Have Pockets Magazine. Their work has also been Best of Net nominated. Merlin is currently working towards a BFA in creative writing at Southern Oregon University. You can find more of them @ merlin_june_is_a_lover on Instagram.