Nadine Rodriguez is a trans, queer Cuban-American writer and photographer born and raised in Miami, Florida. They are an MFA candidate for Fiction at Northern Michigan University, an Associate Fiction Editor for Passages North, a prose editor for Mag 20/20, and a co-editor for Sinister Wisdom: Trans/Feminisms. They have work published or forthcoming in Powders Press, Superstition Review, Alebrijes Review, Queerlings, 34 Orchard, and The New Gothic Review.
after Michael Martone
AUTHOR BIO: Cat Ingrid Leeches is fucking hot for a writer. I mean for anyone really. Her stomach is flat, you could do big crimes on it. Her nipples are two different sizes. I mean one is like a nickel, and one is the size of a dinner plate. Babies follow her everywhere.
She has never had sex.
Art is a violation.
Sex is a violation.
Anytime she thinks about it she falls into a hole. Holes are a volition.
Cat Ingrid’s mother spent her life hospitalized with vertigo. Leeches saw her just the one time, right after their bodies were irreparably separated (a hurried c-section, maternal arteries tangled around the baby’s neck). The mother’s hospitable bed was levitating and spinning in circles. The nurses mostly blamed the mother. Some said it was the electricity, that it had a suspicious nature (these nurses argued that electricity was changing the smell of the world, and not for the better: those with sensitive snouts were bound to go extinct). But her mother also had a suspicious nature in their eyes. It was written in the shape of her slightly beautiful, slightly arched eyebrows. So the soulful devourers of the Effluvia Theory were not going to go to bat for her or put their jobs on the line or anything (they still had plenty of misprinted pamphlets to hand out). Cat Ingrid Leeches peered into the room from a window (the kind you see in cruise ships). She was just a newborn― someone had to hold her head up for her, but she doesn’t remember who they were. Her mother waved at the unnecessary creature, hand turning into a strange bird. In no other way was she notable. Even under piles of blankets, Cat Ingrid could see that her mother’s belly wasn’t flat and rejected her. As an adult she still rejects her. She rejects her dead body. She doesn’t know where it is, that’s how much she rejects her.
Cat Ingrid’s holes are all literal. Her mother’s holes just became that way, whether it was mental laziness or sheer force of will, she will never know. Although, she strongly doubts the latter.
Mary Wollstonecraft once wrote that digressions and circadian rhythms are tools of the weak. She tore this piece of paper up and ate it, then eventually shit it out, where it lingered in British sewage constructions for generations, imprinting its wisdom on other pieces of fecal matter, which through negligence and intentions, made its way into our collective human guts. Leeches has taken these words to heart. They’re the ship that sails through her night.
(Imagine who she could be if Mary Wollstonecraft was her mother. Chaucer and Valerie Solanas would be quaking in their boots).
Cat Ingrid’s great grandmother raised her and always looked grimly on when the topic of desire came up.
Leeches told her guardian not to worry, that one day she would have sex. She lifted up her shirt to show her great grandmother how good she was at starving herself, see? She painted whorls of gold and silver around her belly button, as if to say, Hello world, it is only a matter of time. Lick me and it will make the lint boil in your laundry machines. Yours and mine.
Her great grandmother’s pupils shouted with their tinny mouths HILDEGARDE THAT’S NOT WHAT ANY OF THIS FUCKING MEANS.
A man arrived on a motorcycle and he had long grey hair (dyed, Cat Ingrid was pretty sure) and a plastic leather jacket, and she wanted to desire the desire, so she hopped on and squeezed him between her thighs, but she saw only more holes as she rode away from her childhood home. She emitted them from her mouths, and they were endless, and her throat was dry or maybe wet, and her nipples, which then weren’t the size of coins or dinner plates, but soft as eyelids, bloomed into a grotesque extravagance that slurped at his spine.
The road was littered with holes. She made up her mind that if he accused her, she was going to claim that the holes were always there. Nothing had changed except in his mind, which was obviously deteriorating. But riding the bike had become unsafe.
And of course, this caused one of the stranger disasters in Harris County history. The babies jumped from sky scrapers into the holes. She was ejected from the bike. The bike became a hole. She was paid a sizable fund from the city of Houston to de-tongue her breasts, which stopped babies from leaping out of windows into holes. For the most part. They were and are still attracted to the sight or smell of her nipples. It couldn’t be helped. Can’t be. No one ever found where they went, the babies, because the holes remained holes. They were never filled over in case the children wanted to come out again. Their parents said on the news that they knew their children were still alive. They each had remarkable financial luck for the next five years. Some of them even published Cat Ingrid’s short stories, which seems really generous. Really kind. Or maybe she’s just that good.
We move slow over grassy hills
sleep deep in the untethered
weather February Pisces season unhinge
silly brass, together n reckless
tiramisu @ 1pm EST T4T (turtle4turtle)
you play plush rough w/ dreamy eyes
retreat in yr city our home
shaved necks under palms
soft early winter moon rain
tapping windowpane pulse I put
yr hand on my humming while
the finches dance branches
thru logic wind n possibility all
of time wrapped around our perfect
mouths
all the YouTube tarot readers tell me I’m self sufficient n all the astrology readers tell me I’m independent n my mom doesn’t ask for help all that much actually n my therapist says that even self sufficient ppl need to be cared for n I’m afraid this whole time I’ve performed the sort of independence that makes me unreachable n who am I when you can reach me n is it ok that I’m working this out n wear a hat that says still learning so ppl know that n I need to be different this time if I want to be seen even tho I don’t want everyone to see me n I’m shaving my head again a 3 week molt n I admit I enjoy the blades on my skull on a call during sunset on a Sunday in February after putting a farmer’s market blueberry in my mouth n bringing it up to the phone’s front facing camera for you to eat from my lips from yr front facing camera n this intimacy has me out here like that n each time I communicate my want I feel closer to myself n the blueberry’s center tastes better from yr mouth but I offer mine n ask you to
Alexis Aceves Garcia centers care in their work as a writer, co-curator of already felt: poems in revolt & bounty, and managing editor of Deem Journal. They are currently the steward of a heart-shaped hummingbird feeder in their Abuela’s backyard and an MFA in Writing student at UCSD. You can find their poems in beestung, The Hennepin Review, The Best of the Net Anthology 2022, Apogee Journal, Peach Mag, and The BreakBeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNext, with poems forthcoming in rivulet. Follow them on Instagram and Twitter @loveloaf_.
sister, this land is fine
dust the Creators brushed off
their tables and saws.
my shovel resents this burial.
it tells me this dirt tastes green,
sickly, unnatural.
you are no longer here.
i am glad,
but i need to grieve.
your right arm carried your dances;
it mocked the Space meant to contain
the giving god.
your two eyes, now judgment-blank,
would be easy to eat. i would wash them
down the gullet, wine-slick.
your face, with the forehead
i kissed when we were young
and you adored me: i love you,
but one of us had to die.
i grab the spent shovel,
the bag with the rest of you.
red doves fly full-speed
into your grave to join you.
their necks break in time with my every step.
(SISTER sits at the confetti-specked white bar, and lets the housemade
Dog’s Tongue soak into her skin. She thinks of the woman from her visions
on the Famine Road.)
sister, sister
(lifts up her thumb)
these grains of sand
out-exist you.
get thee to a fishery, sister
(pulls an ear from the bucket)
get thee to a pit
Ántonia you are the disproof
of god, how i suffered you
strip me of my jackal skin
shame me nude and brittle
(takes a bite from her fist before hurling it to the lake)
i hope you are being eaten by eels
in an arsenic moat
(BROTHER drops the bucket and staggers, out of breath. The whites of
his eyes have shifted to a burnt orange. He wipes rusty drops from the
edges of his eyes. He walks away slowly. A falcon falls into the shallows
and turns to porcelain teeth. SISTER’s favorite flowers begin to grow from
the bucket.)
Ántonia Timothy is from Baltimore, MD. Her first collection, Self-Titled by Alien, has been published by Milk Carton Press. Individual poems have appeared in: Poet Lore, The Fiddlehead, Washington Square Review, and Los Angeles Review, among others. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University.
the empress cries / imposter syndrome / hallucinogenic games / utter confusion / suppressed bar codes scanned / consumerist dysphoria feasts me / westward from conventional reality / no guardian angel / will comfort me / steam erupts / a volatile geyser / people watch / questionable eye contact / salmon buoy in saltwater / when i see / facial hair / my adams apple / j.k rowling / cis women storm troopers / wear a pussy hat horde / a public restroom / hear the frat boy muttering / faggot / waiters emphasize / “sir” / sneered using / my valley girl vernacular / the filler word “like”/ assumed ignorant / by glass door employers / doctors gatekeep hormone therapy / family using my dead name / real name rarely believed / violent invalidation jabs / by ones truly obsessed / with their god-given / gender / acrobats juggling sharpened daggers / toss at lip glossy / cracked mirrors / enshrouded in / trans people’s blood / i dream of dying / all the time / living in / a bleak world / actively / stripping / humanity.
Until the moon comes out
Shall the hummingbird rise
Self-worth and love sows
The revolution’s seeds
To bourgeoisie demise
a faggy \ speaks valley girl dialect \ vanilla throats slit \ by a queen \ a joker \ a king \ flaming hands wear \ angelic stiletto nails \ vivid lip gloss paint \ slides my cupids’ bow \ red coral earrings \ vitally dangle my ears \ freshly shaven neck \ a holographic sheen \ a lace front brunette wig \ over my hair \ lavender metallic heels \ i imagine wearing \ a magenta palomo silk dress \ the mirror watches me \ passionately lip sync \ fka twigs \ blasting out laptop speakers \ a regal empress reigns \ southern california \ glistening like selenite \ sailor venus limelight \ there is so \ much beauty \ in \ being \ trans \ only a definition \ bitch i am living \ in euphoria \ embracing ambivalence \ a new horizon \ eastward with no escapist reality \ the city on the hill \ crumbles to dust \ unabashed vulnerability \ my true power awakens \ praying to no deity \ my genitalia exists outside \ illusory glass ceilings \ no longer climbing \ the destination \ is already within me \ what is in between \ my legs \ an intergalactic monarch butterfly \ deflects u.s. society’s militarism \ melts their utopian sheltered cottage \ and knows they will \ be for \ ever free
Emerald Rose Anastasia is a 26-year-old poet originally from Bakersfield, California. They currently reside in NYC and are pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the New School. This is their first publication.
My heart still breaks at the thought of my sister who I am so thankful for.
becomes
I’m already dead, so I’m left with only regrets. Heaven with thanks
I wish you peace and happiness in Esau.
My mother was always very sympathetic, but one day, a close friend of mine went to the hospital.
He was infected with smallpox, a type 1 infectious disease at the time, and did not have time to try his hand.
He passed away two weeks later. It was so sudden and unexpected that I cried
didn’t even come out. Even now, when I think about that time, I feel empty and empty.
The suffering was hard enough to describe, and it is still good in my eyes
The horror of Seoul, which was completely ashes even after the war ended.
It was.
At that time, in my dreams, I had nightmares of being tied to a rope and being dragged around every day.
dreamed together At that time, if you looked any smarter, you would be mocked as a rogue.
Many unfortunate people were sacrificed besides me.
When I arrived in Yeonan-eup, there was no place to accommodate it, so there was a water tank that stores water.
It was to put us all in. When we go in, there are people other than us.
It was too narrow and the air was so cloudy that I couldn’t breathe. like that
Holding me from both sides and asking me to go together, I can’t help but be dragged away
there was no They dragged me to a village called Ibangge, far from our house.
He went and told him to tell me where the reactionaries were.
was to be locked up.
After walking through the night, I arrived at the shore in front of Gyodong Island and waited until dawn.
I remember that it was December 20, 1951.
A small wooden boat came in rowing, and the four of us rode a boat.
We arrived safely at the tidal flat where the gu was visible. I’m so glad I met the savior
I cried.
I was released and I still can’t forget the severe torture I had been subjected to for two days.
I don’t have it, but I remember being hit so many times that I passed out several times.
Everything written here is an honest true story of my life.
again to my descendants
May there be no life of suffering like mine.
I would like to leave this record with earnest prayers.
Long ago, my grandfather escapes from North Korea because he realizes the danger of staying in the village where he lives on the brink of war. Quietly, in the middle of the night, he drags a boat to the water with two other young men from his town, and they alone, family-less, set away. He arrives in what becomes South Korea and works in labor camps, the typical way to survive during the post-war reconstruction. After some time, he becomes an important freight-forwarding business owner, and I have magazines on my bookshelf with his wry, dry smile on the covers.
My father, his eldest son, a child, wants to play music rather than anything else. Before long, my grandfather finds out, and tears up all of his music books. My sister anthologizes this event in our reconstructed family history with a simple imagined declaration: It is not a man’s job to play music.
My father listens to Die Meistersinger, a Wagner opera about guild singers from antiquity, in our house in the Chicago suburbs. After only so long, I learn about the Nazi’s love of Wagner’s music. My father listening to Die Meistersinger, Nazis burning paintings: a sort of Stockholm Syndrome tied to banning art that follows our family from Korea to Chicago, Evanston, the suburbs, chasing forever.
There’s a painting in the SFMOMA by Anselm Kiefer with the words Die Meistersinger scrawled at the top. It’s a blue painting of a field, with the canvas covered in straw. The clumps of straw that sit atop the paint are protrusions sagging out, like herniated sacs. Straw becomes organs, spilling out of itself and gushing red paint into other parts; straw creates autonomy, crafted through bloodless flesh. Circles of red and white lay silent next to phantasmic black splotches. Something floats out of the canvas, but I don’t see it, I just feel some strange shaking in my arm from where it must have touched me.
These clumps are die meistersinger. They burn in secret and sing in the tempo marking langsam und schmachtend, which, my dad explained to me once, translates to slow and languishing. They perform in theaters as, elsewhere, what my father might have cherished is removed, slow and languishing, from memory.
My father is der meistersinger. In one dream I have, I see the painting, my father’s face within the straw. He furrows his brows, as he always does, and twelve limbs of yellow stalk rupture from his body. He screeches, like a Francis Bacon painting, vaults towards me, and the last thing I see before awaking is blood, in the same red color as what hides behind the numbered cardboard of the painting.
Young Fenimore Lee (they/them) is a Korean-American kid, poet, and music journalist residing in Brooklyn, NY, whose work has appeared in or is forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Cosmonauts Avenue, Entropy, and The Concrete Desert Review. Indie rock, emo, post-hardcore, and other music genres are important influences in their writing. They received their BA from Stanford University and are currently an MFA candidate at The New School.
A local moazzin calls the faithful towards goodness as I step into the bathroom to masturbate. It’s (possibly) the holiest night of the holiest month, & I feel vulgar. Often, I am disgusted by how much I think of god. How his blue-eyes will drown my sorrow. How his many-hands will cup my liquid body. His animal-wit will testify it was alright to not give up my small transgressions. I dislike thinking all this, especially among the moans & the oh yes!s & the fuck it, bastards & the croaking voices & the creaking beds & the wet grunts & the thumping of one softness into another—a blue wave pounding a rock. Oh! How I want to forget everything then, close my eyes & not have your face greet me with delight or even your soft flesh transforming into something tenderer—just a vast blueness of the sky, & I floating as if a cloud—an innocent child underneath calling her mama, look, mama, this one looks like me
From god, we came. Whenever I come,
I think of god. Not in that godforsaken way,
more in that look what you made me do way.
It’s true. I’m Taylor Swift for god. I create
music for which god never gives me credit.
To god we shall return. What is a turtle
without its shell? Free. More dexterous.
God created me a left-handed in a muslim
cunt-ry. It takes two to tango. Last winter,
we ate tangerines under the soothing gold.
The citrus made my tongue rub the roof
of my mouth. Or your mouth. Some times,
I can’t even tell the difference. We spat
its seeds upon the sharp green blades,
made promises one can only make young.
Meanwhile, god hovered like a dragonfly,
swore upon the figs and the olives as if
they are staples. Meanwhile, I mourned
god’s dead & ate the cheapest, damned fruit.
Javeria Hasnain is a Pakistani poet and a Fulbright scholar pursuing her MFA Poetry at The New School. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Margins, The Aleph Review, Gutter magazine, Scrawl Place, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.
