MUD by Birdy Carmen

MUD

Words by Birdy Carmen/ Illustration by Jennifer Nguyen [CW: blood]

shallow entry caught roughly in red dusk the washed memory of sharks which unpredicted always loosen forwards gills crashing failure familiar

chords in irish folk menace any softness unknowable but furrowed ears and isles fastidious to festivities shield last winter’s solitudes reliable as he was not as in a garden where all is green but doesn’t shift to the sun epic

refuse the epoch of love for loveless irony also red tepid not gushing a laced bodice laced neck pleasurable in mind hand dawdles sideways and

out to sea traced as if it were barely there fleeing a poem read to entertain barred drunks for nothingness and liturgy again red

spring I bleed frictionless as hope for a child muddied to earth & crowned