Poems in @BestNewPoets, @Gulf_Coast, @NinthLetter, & elsewhere | she/her
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ALT Goat Mag Gabbert Because every man I've ever slept with has wandered off to have kids, but later fucked me again. Because I can't seem to pick a religion. Because, during sex-ed, my teacher showed us a little box with an open slot on her desk, told us to write down our questions and slip them in. Because the first note read: Does sex really make women scream? Because the ancient Greek word tragõidia, which meant "goat song," somehow turned into the modern English tragedy. Because my dad's nickname for me is "smelly." Because for a long time I heard bleat as bleed. Because this song is sweet. It is sweet. Because God told his people to bring him two goats; he said they should give one their sins and let it go, and they should slit the other's throat. Because my brother claims he needs a new razor for "manscaping." Because childless mothers are called nannies.
ALT Because Jesus won't help me. And one night, when a friend and I were fifteen, we took a late train to a faraway party, and a man approached us, whispering, Would you rather be stabbed or sliced? Because hell is an animal with other animals inside it. Because every choice I've had to make involved sacrifice. Because I'm always the one that got away. Nominated by The Journal, Chloe Honum
ALT On a background of waves, a poem reads: the clamshell by Mandy Shunnarah. The weight is in the shoulders— slumped, hunched, round as a clamshell. I waded into a creek once & spotted the sheen through mud-cloud water. Cracked open, her freshwater pearl long drifted on the riffles; the barren mother, hollowed out, twinkled. The eyesocket is a clamshell scientists call the orbital bones. Grief is an orbit so we weep from there—circling like a satellite, a celestial nautilus on its prescribed track. In the scoop of lacrimosa bone, tears forge in friction like pearls, both coerced from their harbors by strain. Pick your pain up by the shell & rinse in the waters where it once was nourished. When you see the treasure lost, look again & find the iridescent gleam—resilient as stars.