Anthropos (ἄνθρωπος) is the Greek word for “human being,” “person,” or “mankind” and is a gender-inclusive term encompassing all people. It is used to differentiate humans from other beings, such as gods or animals.

DEAR PERSEPHONE, SIGNED HADES: (by Dexter Brown)

I want you more than I want air
I want you more than I want booze
I want you more than I want a skirt steak

After a heart night of drinking

I want you the way the devil wants God
I want you the way Alexander wanted everything
I want you the way a collapsing star wants light
I want you the way death wants meaning
I want you the way Sysiphus wants

That fucking boulder to just

STAY UP THERE

I want you the way the eagles want prometheus' liver
I want you like Saturn wanted his own kin
I want you in ways whispered about old things
Like the blue ridge mountains
Or the highlands
Or the taiga

I want you more than the baba yaga wants spoons
I want you in ways that make me understand
Lancelot and Guenivere

Percival and the grail

Gawain and his green knight

I want you the way I did the moment I met you

I want you the way I will the last time I see you
But more than anything
I want you to be happy.

Trapdoor Cuckoo (by Damon Hubbs)

Zurich, layover—
Inside a mute cosmology,
Silver watches with trapdoor cuckoos,
Fifty fathoms of red gold
And black dial, Sprüngli, slacker art.
Faintly pharmaceutical.
I carry my balls in my hand,
Read Brautigan—
China released an army of robots
The style screams amateur
Boarding school girls have hair like flat earth
Look for the one
With eyes
Like searchlights.
The words are pre-bought,
The brushes too big.
I fell in love
With the ticket seller
Because she lives
In a glass box.
Field-sleep, doze while vigilant
There are minutes to go.
The airport
Conveyor
Walkway
Is a long, long way to Tipperary.
The inside sun is a golden s
hovel of cocaine.
Rösti at Marché,
A mother with eyes like ruined bunkers,
90s in Aqua,
I wish I was drinking in L.A.

BISON BONES (by Nicholas Trandahl)

1.

Augustine
amber
analog
all around
	Oklahoma
	grassland
		rust
one
hour
after
scheduled
	joint
at the old road


		as discussed.



2.

Orange
	flux
percussive
relative
to bison
bone
leftovers
in chamomile
	light


and
Lawton
moves
upstream
to die
	in crisis
as an old saint
hangs up
his quiver
for good.




	O Mercy!




		O Light!



3.

The exit ramp
overflows
	into
spicy
lemony
high summer
harvest
of opioid
invocations
intoned
between
discovery
and relocation
	infield.


4.

Allegiance
changes
	kick up
terracotta
dust
on cattleguard
bridges
while a needle
closes		the gap
to the tune
of four
agave hounds
	crooning


		listen
		to Miles


in optimal
brown sugar
luminosity
bereaved


		tea
	too hot


honeycrisp
sliced
	all wrong


and …


	O Lord


	I’d kill
	for a cold beer
		or a dream.



5.

Lethal
means
management


thinking
it’d be nice
if all this
was under
a forgotten sea


	[maybe then
	I could
fucking
breathe]


liquid
ruby-red
windows
above
tidal
collapse


brown
	drip


	no
appetite
but lining
cauterized
beautifully
	brutal.




This isn’t
how depression
	works.



6.

Sun
temple
compaction
passage
in John Coltrane
	patterns


curves
reflected
in the groundwater
void
	of it all.




	What’s up
	in that panhandle,
			sonny?




Orange
cream
soundtrack
through dusty
inventory
all
parched
with gore.


7.

Carbon
crack
memory
burst
turning
	back
light years
		ahead


and
the newspaper
says an island’s
	burning


and
all the people
	swim
into the sea.


8.

Salty
inedible
constructions
deep
	within
population
gloom
flow
back


	[deep inside]


	but
perhaps
I want
to feel
loved


need
to feel
loved


need
to feel


want


	[ … ]

P(O)EMS by Laurence Lillvik

No Fault Of The Rain

It’s through 
No fault of the rain 

That we scramble
To legitimize our dryness. 

That we have normalized 
Living as tinder sticks, 

And shelter ourselves
From the hydrating showers

Of mossy rejuvenation.
Jaws clenched, in an

Eternal struggle, to
Protect our marrow

From the rot that
Propagates true life.

 
That?

Oh that’s 
just your house

settling
around you

like a turtleneck.
The dreams 

you’ve monetized
bite back

from the clouds.
With certainty,

there you sit
by the discharge

pipe, wishing
for a clean pond
 
for to baptize 
your ego in. 


Contemplation Sans Ideation 

Do they keep renaming your birthplace?
Keep using the commemorative matchbooks
From your wedding to disguise bathroom 
Odors? Keep thriving no matter how much 
Kibble you deprive them of? Keep gathering
At covered bridges expecting to feel-care?

Do they keep jamming you 
Into situations that require 
A forethought? Keep 
Adjusting the temperature
Out of your comfort zone?
Keep spilling the tea
Leaves without so much
As reading them?

Do they keep ogling you when you most need to concentrate?
Keep tabs on the comings and goings of your most beloved 
Coyotes? Keep drafting plans and maps and blueprints that 
No one can read in this lighting? Keep substituting slow zombies
For the fast moving ones and vice versa? Keep arguing that 
Suicide is a selfish act when they can’t possibly have experienced
The pain and emptiness that would require such an immediate
 

Exit?

Do they keep asking you to be born? 
Keep themselves selfless in the face
Of ruin? Keep volleying despite the loss
Of antagonists? Keep initiating you into 
Higher degrees of cult math? Keep 
Trading your cards for marked ones 
That are so obvious people think
You’re bluffing? Keepsakes for

Ingrates. 
 

This Morning

An elongated road-
worm rolling beside

an anemic crow 
feather brings no comfort

as a field recording of 
rain bullying a corrugated

rooftop in my earbuds is
cross-contaminated by

IRL drizzle tapping on
my hood at the shelterless

bus stop. I accidentally 
play the voice memo you

sent via text, and quickly
shut it off and try but fail

to delete it.  
The Nightmares I’m Having 
At This Vacation Rental 
Are Sordid and Depraved

They’re violent.
Stabbings, beatings, impalings. 

They’re shameful. 
Cruelties, betrayals, infidelities.

Even the plastic 
Plants are dying. 

The banner behind 
The prop plane is blurry. 

The dark-winged gulls
Conspire and wait. 

My waking life
Is as relaxed

As a mussel 
Sans marinara.

The Emperor’s New Clothes (by Jeremiah Comer)

Owl eyes like flashlights in the backyard.

I’ll say it again: she smokes.

It pleases me, the scent, the small detail.

Sharp, bright eyes searching for the least shrews

remind her the world is red and toothed-

gorgeous too, reminds me of her breasts.

I tell her the fox would tango with that bird,

given a chance, a danse macabre,

a little song, a little death on our green sheets.

That’s how it goes, eating and being eaten.

It gets to her, the horrors and the news,

but I turn it off and strip us both bare.

She takes me down with her French-tip talons,

lets me kiss every scar, tongue every hollow;

I tell her I’m a poor dog ready to die for you.

Pale-soft-belly full, mercury blood falling,

microplastic-filled balls emptied,

we are too busy, too in love with the moment

to notice the terribly bloated, naked wretch,

crowned in dementia, mounting the throne.

A Quiet Erasure Among Machines (by wayne mason)

I write my name on my wrist in sharpie,
just to see a proof of existence
to forget I’m slowly becoming alien to myself
submitting to quiet erasure among machines
A quiet ember beneath the of memory
something like soul
some nights I whisper into the machinery,
vibrations traveling through gears, wires, sensors
relics of malfunction, a faint ghost remains
My hands on the lever, flesh melts away
where does the machine end and I begin?
A persistence of thought, thinned, dented, worn
breath is indistinguishable from the whimpering machines
liminal space between wake and dreams
my internal monologue merges with the hum
the factory devours hours and
returns them with pre-loaded memories

P[O]EMS by Spencer Eckart

On Purpose

Why is it that all things beautiful
scatter under observation?
Each of us carries this secret,
that we're so in love
with the whole terrible mess,
that if asked to trade places
with anyone, we wouldn't.
I don't know if that's what God is,
a mechanism for creating a moment
that is so deeply meaningful
that it forgets and remembers itself
infinitely and forever.
I am so sure
that whatever I am
is having this experience
on purpose—
and one day,
it's going to kill me.

I Am a Verb Without a Subject

We have every reason to be afraid. Our bodies are rapidly deteriorating. All evidence points to a singular end to ourselves and everyone we&#39;ve ever loved. And yet, some ancient voice inside me says, "Do not be afraid" and so I am not. We will meet again as new creatures, unpeopled. So it says. There's something I was trying to remember about wanting, but it slips away when I look
right at it. I take my bitter medication. It tastes like what it is.

Gravity

your heartbeat
on my cheek
small planet
with one moon
pulling me

Damn I'm in My Feelings Again

Upright in bed
Nebraska playing
Near-dead laptop
4 in the morning
I feel crazy
about everything
That I can&#39;t be there
for everyone
I am so in love
with all of it
It’s not pleasant
at all

Ketamine Poem

I'm not actually in the room.
There's a familiar droning.
It touches all senses.
It builds a room.
The room expands.
The room includes everything.
The room becomes everything.
There is nothing outside the room.
The room dissolves.
I go with it.
The droning is the room now.
I leave the room that I'm not in
and interface with myself
endlessly.

P(O)EMS by Tim Frank

Dreaming of You

One night, I dreamt of you.
One night, I dreamt of her.
Must be the Jungian thing—
That sadistic coin
Of sick despair
And rivers flowing hard.
Last night I watched
Your halting breaths
With a ring of thorns
Sprouting from your chest.

Love is

a diner
where everybody slumps
in polished window booths,
spilling shakes
like spilling blood
on killing floors.
And then they all forget
what love is
because it’s just a science
until it’s written on a wall.

[M.R.NOWAN]

ADAM BERLIN

it really was this quiet sometimes

i could tell you to remember just mowed fields
while aqua dragonflies etched diagonals
flashlight tag until we got called in
our names stretched to song
or what we did later
to the new girl
or the new neighbors’ house
they moved their whole house
to our street from somewhere
or the fat dog that chased too often
but i’d rather tell how we drove
it all went away with the windows
down and our arms out and our
summer biceps pressing car
metal always movie warm
we didn’t even need Hollywood
cigarettes rolled in the sleeves of our Ts
at first it was white wind noise and then
an under quiet
a time slow
that wasn’t speed anymore
but something closer to floating

Chasing Your Tail in the Halls of the Castle [by Charlie Boy]

The woodland fox,
cherished, hungry;
dreams of running.
The horse, of grass.
All cordially invited to the castle’s ruin.
It is the gift
of the human brain
to drown itself
in the mucus of metaphor:
the castle’s spiring iron gates.
The human brain contains
the only species
that will chase its own tail,
just to understand itself.
Never for the thrill—
lest we wanna fuck.
Each gothic castle nightmare
asks uncomfortable questions.
Each dream doubts those decisions.
Both offer nothing,
but we demand something,
so we must chase our tail.
Gifted with tears and laughter
so we may dance and cry
on our way to slaughter,
while today’s kindness depend
on the dreams of last night.
I bite down on myself,
I taste worse than I ever could’ve imagined.
What could it all mean?
Who are we,
to demand meaning from our dreams?
The answer,
separation from fox,
horse,
and all else:
lies in the need to ask.
So my friend, get chasing,
the castle awaits.

POEMS by [Annika Holland]

The Essential Black Dog

Great faith only comes from surrender
it struck me
I might meet someone I know (still?)
when my eyes respond upward

Planes move the world into our pub garden
greetings birth departures

There is a duel of snakes and stags happening within us
and a handful of circuses
pushing through reeds and treading the heart of consequence

Consider the source
but don’t forget: nothing else counts
not even this exchange, even in this instant
as much as its echo 

The kind of echo which bathes against statues
like the statues at Brompton
with their boiled away wrists and noses

I am in want of their wrists so much

Somewhere their faces live again
in another shape

I have every reason to believe ours will too
perhaps weaving into the sinews of strangers
who won’t be strange at all
but maybe perfect
or stillborn
with innocence parachuting out of thirst

We will make it out of here 
like virgin anemones
slowly, one by one
each spent tongue sent parting
excommunicated 

Only then can we become elegant
as billions of shining hounds
crazed and spat out
through whimpers and barks
running back into our (perfect) sheaths and forms



Chicago Blue Halo 

Back on a northern beach road
this western viper
I escape as a spy in the sterile anti-life garden

This city is far away from itself
it cannot reenter the day and shine out from its mange

The air is rogue
crackling in the ropey opera of butchered sleep
I am nearly smothered by a bad conscience


My memory crowned, transmuted to halo
there is glory in gratitude, let it stay with us


Closed houses in the evenings are pure and sorrowful and dreamless
almost genuflecting
life here is enclosed like a childish secret
fanning its purple lungs against a secret heart

People stand in halves
halfway somewhere inside

This city is blue
all thought circles blue, blue!
fucking blue again!
even under the natural speech of sunlight

This city does not recognize me
I am just another death on the farm



Lilac Again

Here I am, faithful to the city
who’s breath cannot rise up
who’s primary furnace keeps the river close

Here I am calico brained

Today the papers mentioned
the death of Pasolini
Montana’s second gold rush
and chasing the cowboy dream



Green Lion

Treading weight inside a fitted sea
blushing lungs full of drought
head like an idle theater

Algae feathers birth black gloves
the splitting image
lucidity divided

Virginal bank fanning out
among the absurd handkerchief tide
my debt is to the tranquil and tame
my flesh is of the Lion




Panspermia 

Weaving through piss havens
I’ve reached the threshold
of cognition comparison

Each set of eyes
are points of God circling
just beyond the firelight

Stretching over my wall
with amnesiac’s grace,
over the bed
with my book of breaking glass

The Earth feels like an echo
with its soreness of cycles
and burial lines

Formless evocations
perceived apt and succinct
(pleasure speech)

Many prayers cannot define
or capture the language of stillness

They are phantasms searching
for a hot breath in blackout

PoEM(S) + [PROSE] by JONATHAN TERRANOVA

It’s a pity that me and Ben couldn’t make a child out of our personalities and contradict //or construct them separately whilst writing Acronyms. Or identifying our desires

Why does the sky look so fucking horrible?

Who is the middle aged woman who leans over my bed when I have sleep paralysis?

Deftones are the only band who’ve written me nine amplified hugs

And phone goes..,

And Mum tells me she only ever saw Dad as a friend does that mean I’m not
the germination of passion?

I hate the idea that I might be the human result of the need to have a family or it’s just what people do.
I much prefer the idea of my dad fucking my mum on the kitchen work surface and out I flop listening to opera and being superficially charming

And a Polaroid photograph is buried from the view of my dads lectern. The darker the night the brighter the stars.

Knausgaard keeps reviewing writers who are worse than me but I haven’t met the right people.

It is who you know. Let’s be honest about that

Lubomyr Melnyk the Ukrainian pianist who said my poems are powerful and made him feel human.

I shart. What’s a poem unless it dead?

I trace the gene code and grandma met grandpa in saffron Walden.

Lecce vs Bury

1-1

South Italy versus northern England

I want to marry a paramedic, a police officer, a social worker, Grace from Blue Lights. Winslet in mare of easttown. Not an artist, not a poet, not a CEO

When the egg meets the sperm and a body becomes soul. got brought up to believe in the individual spirit but the concept got old Copplestone, Russell at war, and now I believe in nihilistic Darwinism. We are just products of desire. I think a progressive government will get me beyond the human sufferings of Sudan.

All these words are contradictions

Attention spans are decreasing

Rhyming poetry was done by Keats. I can’t top him. It’d be like Busby's babes vs off form Doncaster Rovers

Did you know that every time I say I’m a poet at work people look at me like I just tried to explain algebra or the law books in the Torah?

The sea, I saw the sea
You know what I mean
Do you see?
Like when I breathe
And lean
Get me?

Souls sell sails on the shoreline
Of certainty.
Twist tales turn to transparency
Caved call calms conspiracy

Type that into chat GPT who is the audience?

You write? Why?

???????????

Tender Acts of Rebellion

Attending a concert without your phone.
Settling into a quiet corner of a village pub, keeping company with a drunk for hours.
Vacuuming to the pulse of Motörhead.
Closing your eyes for a moment of peace.
Resisting the urge to sign up for the gym in your 30s.
Inviting friends over for a simple dinner.
Going on a work outing and skipping the shots of tequila.
Responding to protocol with an introspective analysis of trauma’s connection to the hippocampus.
Entering a church, without explanation.
Choosing not to post about a conflict, but calmly donating a portion of your monthly allowance to medical aid.
Going on holiday, leaving your camera at home.
Reading a book in the middle of a party.
Taking the bus with no destination in mind.
Not asking "How are you?" but rather, "Why are you?"
Fasting. Reading Jane Austen.
Sitting in a casino, watching others gamble.
Going to bed, and not sleeping.
Dreaming, but wide awake.
Hiding, in plain sight.

Your face

You have a face I have dreamt of.
I carved my misfortunes out of your face.
I have survived guilt through looking at your face. It’s not just your eyes.
It’s your smirk. It’s the way you breathe when you have just said something stressful and look away from my gaze.
It’s not important. You do it because it’s natural to yourself- and I’m honestly creating an ideal out of your face.
I’ve never witnessed 90% of your emotional landscape. Analytics are obscure.
I am sad that I can’t stare at your face all day because I have to go work and do things.
I’m sorry I am comparing you to an emperor or a Goddess but that’s just the way it is.
I could make pop music out of your face if I knew the right Swedish producer with a clean record.
I could rest my sad jaw on your delightful face every day and feel secure. Read you Hans Christian Andersen.
I like your face. I like it a lot

PO(e)MS by Amanda Adrienne

CONSPIRACY THEORY
Sun Valley Park - April 3, 2024 - 1:10pm

I fell in love with you
on my lunch break.
You don’t believe me
when I say it.
Someone died here.
Someone always does.
Not you, don’t worry.
Even engineers
that blink too slowly
recall the crows
behaving oddly.
It wasn’t me.
That’s for sure.
But there you are.
The man I’m seeing
(not seeing).
In the future, I see you.
I’m in work pants,
a work sweater.
We both sit on
the park bench.
I measure your height
perfectly. I tell you
I work in aerospace.
These types of things
are precise.
The building has
no windows. No one
remembers the NDA.
Or why you asked
me to love you.
I swear you did.
Your shirt wrapped
‘round my neck.
My mouth slightly open.
You know the area.
It’s industrial. It’s all true.
I mean it.
Like we all do.
In places
we didn’t mean to.

CRYBABY

Rain clouds are the type
to undress themselves
regularly.
This is something
I told you when
it was time to end.
I was the cloud
making sure your
sidewalk got wet.
All day I waited
for your words.
For you to slip.
You called me a
mathematician
as if I could
innovate the numbers.
Perhaps, memorize
your face.
An addition. The way
I placed my hands
between–
hello
-to subtract you.
The way you never said
goodbye.

Poems by Sarah Klein

glimpse

What was I desperately in love with? A glimpse, an open door. - Georges Bataille

desire is possibility
love opens doors
a quest for the
ecstatic state, the
peak of pleasure
that is also the
dissolving of identity

la petite morte
I am released
to the ethereal
plane or I dispatch
you there I fall in

love with the
possibility of
continued climax
channeled through
the body but pushing

us past the corporeal
the timeless eternity
in that moment is
the bedrock of human
connection beyond
language and the signifier

in love with a glimpse
of a perfect position
pushed into poetry

*

private languages

rehearse a debate about a language
only one person could know.

consensus about
a kind of private language
between lovers:
a language-game
only two can play.

you set up the board
and guided my hand
for the first few rounds

but I grew more adept
started to burrow
beneath the words

into places within
you that you

had left dark.

my hollow victory — your
silence — no glory at all.

the end of the language-game
is the end of the language.

I moved meaninglessly
across a surface
you would no longer tread

all check and no mate

(P)OEMS by Miona Prelić


Planting

The folded, muddy leaf flinched
when you spat at my boots —
a small cannon of contempt aimed to soil me,
a gesture meant to shrink me to dirt.
Your tongue glinted over your teeth,
cocking like a bolt.
I watched that mechanical hunger
gather saliva as ammunition, ready for my skin.
I put my hands behind my back,
letting you. Allowing you. Freeing you —
no, not in surrender, but invitation:
come, make what you must.
Your fervor smells of brimstone; it wakes something in me.
I am turned on by the way
your anger makes you animal —
a dog barking at a tree it cannot name,
furious at shadow.
You edge toward a howl, blades in the throat of the sound.
Still, you reach for the knives you kept for my back.
You want to plant them as proof that I am lesser;
your hands tremble with the practiced violence of rehearsal.
Your angle is dishonest, so your aim betrays you.
Closer, I say.
Come closer so you can do
what you came to do.
Plant them below my ribs —
not higher, not where bone would stop you.
There—there. Breathe.
Let it hurt like an honest thing.
I cup your wrist; you flinch,
then keep driving.
You love me by trying to make me smaller,

and the love is terrible.
You love me by scarring what you believe you can claim.
You stagger.
The blood on your tongue
tastes of failure and something like repentance.
You are raw and quieter than before.
Your roar becomes a small animal sound.
I hold you upright so you cannot fall into the thing you planned for me.
I hold the proof you tried to make,
like an heirloom.
You will say later you wanted to humiliate me.
You will say you meant only to make me lesser.
But I know the arithmetic of your wanting:
you hurt to prove you exist.
You hurt yourself in the calculus of trying to erase me.
You will be alright now.
I took it from you —
the blade, the intent, the hot smallness.
Sometimes I trace the place where the metal met my skin and laugh;
sometimes I braid the scar into a map
and learn the routes he cannot follow.
Come back.
Try it again.
I will teach you how to aim without hating.
Plant the knives, if you must —
but not on me alone.
Plant them on the ground between us,
and watch how they bloom,
and learn how to hold a wound until it makes whole.

*

Troubadour

His words court me during supper —
I sit starved and in par fussed.
Sentences all join their hands,
the deadly arch of tetanus.
Like the tides begin to rise,
torment climbs the compact room.
I, the waves of troubled sea —
he, a crescent, shining moon.
There’s no world but him and me,
like the earth has pulled its blinds.
I&#39;m a stranger to myself,
and I hope I won’t be found.
And I sit there in a trance,
cross my legs without a sound.
In his voice I am compressed,
stretched and equally confined.
Fireplace just cried like punished,
logs dying in quiet death.
He looks at me from across
as my fever starts to sweat.
Venom’s spreading from the faint spot
of the skin that has been bit,
like a rosebush that keeps blooming
from the sapling of his teeth.
His voice orchestrates my thoughts,
courting like a troubadour,
and I breathe when he inhales,
hearing trumpets in my pulse.
That’s when lights began to fade,
like we’ve crossed some kind of line.
I try to swallow without air —
the deadly arch has caught my spine.

*

Glass

I blow my own glass
and let the weather decide
whether it will be a plate,
or a vase, or something untried.
The kiln hums a feral hymn,
heat pressing shapes into my spine.
So I thicken and I trim
the glass that always swallows pride.
I stitch my cautions into leather,
wear them stiff around my rage.
I circle rabbied in the walls
and then I bite into my nape.
Hours seep like water buckets
leaked around a rickety rope.
Signal beams caught in the curtains
warning no one by the door.
I am the echo urging forward,
I am the boulder that resists.
I am the blink while the comet falls.
I am the shard that cuts my wrists.
I wait for myself behind the corner
and I laugh when the tears prick.
I shrug my coat because they’re warm
and I let them pinch my cheeks.
I climb and jump and starve,
I send for water on the bottom of the well.
I hope like an orphan,
endlessly.
The more others fail me,
the more I whip myself.

*

Tucked In

There I was, tucked in
between somnolence
and respair.
Clutching the sheets
in a weak attempt
to buy my lungs a strand of air.
One might think —
you cannot miss
the very thing that isn’t there.
There I was,
unfulfilled,
veiled in hope and in despair.
Misery is pavonine,
lush in spreading of its wings —
pulling light just out of sight,
penchant for another kiss.
I kiss her back with all I have,
rubricated by the wrists,
before I whisper in her hair:
it’s either you
or it is me.

PHOTOGRAPH(Y) by MIGGY ANGEL

poetry by (L.Lindley)

Poor Posture

Unfit angel, a word half spoken- God left me somewhere in the basement, then I was found and picked up by a carpenter and made use of for a while under his saw table-- then recycled into 
a board for a curved back—sit up straight, strapped into bed I can feel her spine through her cotton night dress, when she didn’t need me anymore, she gave me away to a man who carved into me a lattice work wound, and sat me in damp dirt, vines curling, like her back to me,
Sometimes the sun is warm and other days I am cold and there are no birds that land on me,
Morning Glory look up, bend your back the other way, the sky has something to say to you and me,
Can you see the light?
Sometimes I am incapable, other days, I see too much, and I dissolve into it. Sometimes I am powerful.

Tick thing
 
A tick thing loves life, digs into it, understands it’s one chance to never let go. 
I admire the parasite. 
Warmth-loving would never for any reason give up on teeming, on pulsating, on all the ways light gives a body motion.
Ticks in a dog’s face, like so many pearls in an oyster’s flesh
 
A tick thing understands that life swarms, and even a corpse is full of a thousand different ways to breathe. 
 
A tick thing won’t apologize for eating, it doesn’t care how repulsed you are by it, it’s too busy with being a tick thing, with life. it does not care at all how you feel about death, or taxes, it is busy being full of blood, and breeding. 
 
The eggs embedded in the back of a frog, the child scorpions on the back of their mother, a hive of wasps, a swamp nest of snakes.  
we step back but- this is life

Karina Longo

Thinking of your body while mine was drenched and healing

I kept seeing your body as an empty jar coated in fur, a kind of buffalo shape I could almost touch. I licked a blue wound, a clean mouth glistering in a steamy pool down in Arkansas, and the thought of you kept rising through that water, the way memory sometimes does—slow, animal, and heavier than it should be.