Category: Issue #22

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.