POETRY: THE DAMNED DIVINE

Clear Curtains

Robin Gilespie

In the Details

Cecil Sayre

God is in her left breast. His right index finger points into her left arm.

Mastectomy. Lymphadenectomy. And yet, He will return.

A year later, He is in her left calf,

He is nestled in the curve of her right hip bone, He is worming His way up through her spine.

God burns brighter than radiation, exploding bursts of light dotting her brain;

He is more searing. He is more intoxicating than her daily drug cocktail.

This is God, tenacious through all the vomiting.

This is God where her liver, stomach should be.

Bald, bloated, wandering: this is God moving her out of herself, away from pain.

God

Oh God

Bloodstained Gowns

Lindsey Bryant

You wanted to stay in and work on our finances— go through the closet and get rid of all the junk

I wanted to go out and dance— fuck these dishes they’ll be there tomorrow

Sharp pain

Pressing my wound with my hand so I can predict and control the sting

You were busy picking off hair I’d shed on my sweatshirt and the chair

“Your hair gets fucking everywhere! I can’t stand it”

I want to get out of the house

“You go— some of us got shit to do! Laundry isn’t going to fold itself”

Ah the perfect crimson sequined party dress

I unfold and slide into Shimmy shimmy Light bounces and shines as unpredictable fireflies tease of wonder

Sharp pain Each twist sequins slice more cuts deeper

If I can just make it to the dance floor the bass will synch with this throbbing and drown out the ache

To bleed out in a party or night gown?

Rather die dancing than budgeting my own funeral

Or maybe a hospital gown?

Was warm sponge bath healing salve thoughtful bandage happy ending massage an option?

I thought the cost of asking might be—

“Omg look you’re bleeding everywhere! So much to clean up!

How could you let this happen? If only you would have [insert responsible precaution] then you wouldn’t have gotten hurt in the first place. This is why I always say [insert directive]” too high

Sharp pain

Am I the one twisting the knife?

Ebbs & Flows

Jillian Thomas

i ebb and i flow and sometimes i hemorrhagei forget that i am far too comfortable letting things pass me by until they bleed through my ears i will grin until my cheeks are numb and i cannot even feel the blood leaking through my lips i will stand and look pretty and pretend that i do not even exist i will stand before everyone i know and let them see me in a way i refuse to see myself i will flex my phalanges until they are bruised on the inside and then i will flex them some morei relish in the pain it brings me i am a calf still streaked in amniotic fluid i am barely more than placental but i try to exist in the way my mother does // i never could have predicted these tidal tsunamis that erode until they are destroying themselves instead i never could have pictured an ocean drowning in itself make no mistake- i do not burn bridges just to smell the flame, no, i burn them because i can no longer let them rust and twist and mold i must

Put Them Out Of Their Misery

i am doing it for you, don’t you see? right. i am doing it for you.

Edible

Zoe J. Gianfrancesco

i. a girl is her mouth: an amalgamation of how her lips purse, her tongue darts, her teeth marks. how can she lap it up for you? having a tendency to cry at restaurants. realizing you are a body. you are a space being occupied. you are, you are, you will be— ii. scared of aging but terrified of forgetting. i wonder if my mother is struggling. if she has aged enough to be her soul. to pass her mouth, to be her exception. if your gums are dark, if your teeth fall out, are you still a body? are you idle? are you afraid? iii. the fires in her soul devour and leave growth in their wake. i wonder if the greeks felt the fetishization was beautiful. if they knew that wine was good for the soul, if the liver was simply a limitation. if the mind is trapped in the body. iv. the body is ajar doors that need closed before another opens. the women i know are wilting— they are explanations for the men in their family. i hope they don’t cry. i hope they weep. v. how much of yourself can you pour into someone else before they become what you need? how long until they become what they feared, what you desired?

Antibacterial

Elizabeth Mason

I’m afraid to touch anything. After school, I send you to your room and make you shower. The water bottle you took to school goes straight into the dishwasher. I haven’t let you carry a lunch box this year. It’s all paper bags and directives to throw the garbage away at school. I don’t want anything from that building coming into this house without being cleaned.

I run the washing machine every afternoon. I run the water over my soapy hands all day. I am trying to be brave. It’s not really working.

I’m THAT lady. The one with a drawer full of Clorox wipes, rolls and rolls of paper towels. It’s a temporary insanity. I think. I hope. I hope that this is temporary. I hope that hope is still a thing, because it feels far away. It’s like my eyesight in the morning. I can see the letters, but they’re blurry. I can’t make out the words. I can see the outline of hope, but I don’t feel it. I don’t know it anymore.

The entire world is blurry, and it’s hard to make out what’s right in front of me. There will always be the laundry. I do it more and more often. And that’s a comfort. But, It’s also a calamity. I keep washing my hands. I keep washing the masks, our clothes. I keep gazing in praise of clean surfaces. Can anything be clean enough? Can I keep my precious boy safe without terrifying him? I run hot water over our clothes, hot water over my soapy hands, rinse them though they are cracked, though they are bleeding.

Sweet Sixteen

Hannah Weisz

You have glitter in your hair. When you spin, your lavender dress Floats around you, double-helix Claire’s earrings twist around themselves, Bracelets jingle a bell-adjacent melody. Your heels rocked easily, finding home in every beat you knew What you were doing. Your friends said they loved me, Your mother asked about the nature of our friendship, Your father blessed your strength in Jesus’ name.

I can taste sweet-sixteen cake on your tongue, Our well-worn skin glistening through the blur of doubt. Can I miss our hands and hiding in practice, not just theory?

Can I love you when I don’t know if I will reach your sixteen?

What is love if I can’t see it clearly in the midst of this century?

Getting déjà vu from daydreams of our future, I want to touch you like we have time, Hold your hand over the table, over our heads, Miss you for an endless meaning, Love you like we were never a secret.

This fog reminds me I can never feel you precisely, But from the distance a lavender beacon shines through, Flashing a message I must decode.

Pedestal Evy Smith

Since I was born, I have been set on your pedestal. Your feelings about yourself reflect on me as if I’m a mirror; Your flaws are projected like they’re mine. I’m a broken image of you, A picture frame shattered into pieces of our relationship. I live in a routine of people-pleasing and high-achieving, A song put on repeat by your overbearing presence; Your image of self-beauty is synonymous with pain, The pain of being almost enough for your unrealistic standards. Off the pedestal I step, Done being a victim of your poking and prodding, So tired of barely missing the finish line you set At an impossible distance no one can reach.

Adrien Lee

I focus on life-scale contemporary portraits in clay that work toward accessibility and community influenced by concepts in brutalist architecture and the imaginary. In my most recent collection, I combine elements of the human figure and animals to compose each piece. My process of working the clay is rooted in motion-based composition. The work is built solid with an internal armature to secure the form. The sculpture is then hollowed out with the goal of finishing the piece within two firings.

Choir Boy

Kieran Orndorff

I was a choir boy singing about things I didn’t really mean

Forgiveness, fortitude, sacrifice, adult words from the mouths of babes

Carried across the air to the ears of parents fantasizing about trading places

Too young to understand the amount of blood needed for a proper sacrifice

Too innocent to understand how the gut contorts when placed in the position of pried forgiveness

There’s a cute awkwardness in the way a child shuffles their hands while singing about such things

The way their feet stomp in place, ready to explode as if Someone’s shaking their bodies like a champagne bottle

The lights cascading down as if God himself is lifting the chin of each face

All are devils hiding in plain sight, like the liquid poured into the last cup of Socrates

The bear will tear the flesh of the fawn, the wolf will collapse the throat of the lamb, there’s no need to blame God or the Devil

Each is forever necessary to the other, yet we all hope one wins

As adults we slowly find that a sacrifice to the light provides Satan with his shade

The collapse into hell brings forth an even stronger applause when reaching the gates of heaven

Too scared to admit that good and evil both bring pain

Too lazy to accept the turmoil necessary for a simple rain

Therefore, stand in applause, spare the child the revelation of sacrifice we choose to ignore

I was a choir boy singing about things I didn’t mean

I was a child given fruit from a forbidden tree

I was a man unwilling to pay the fee

When You Find Out Where You’re Going to Steep Your Tea

Eroldi Idlore

When you find out where you’re going to steep your tea, it’s all gonna end. This is the only holy place, my friend.

When the birds bitch like, I’m too tired to enjoy the dawn, they’re right. Let me build a roof so I can fuck it up.

Beyond my skill set, get me some clay; my hands will morph out of my brain and into a cave.

My childhood wouldn’t be surprised. Out of the rain and into the dirt, now mud please the landfills

How do you make the pieces fit? It’s all sexual, every fucking thing. I just figure: leave it alone, and put the characters outside of you. Make it about Jan or Jane; put the quotes in quotes like a story.

“She went to the market.” Wait, that’s not a story. “She said she wanted a friend.” That’s still not it.

“She stood on the emptying banana stand and cried, ‘These hardening green ‘nanners ain’t like how they used to be!’

And the farmer took her home rather than carried her out.

The potatoes followed, the celery watched, and the strawberries took notes.”

That’s it, said the earth. Stone in your hand feels good.

Are We But Leaves

Abbie Doll

the self s c a t t e r s (itself) as a tree molts & the process will always feel like depositing fragments of our essence we drop them everywhere we go it’s too easy (to feel only the loss with no recall— the body rejuvenates) & i always worry what’ll become of me when i’m both bare & barren, what will remain beyond my splintered bark & trailing roots but that’s neglecting the whole notion of growth, this system of biological s h e d d i n g & i can’t help but stash/hoard tension, bundled in my slumped shoulders like limbs straining to support the weight of the whole damn sky one big gust of wind & flimsy whimsy me will tumbleweed away all

Dilapidated Ari Cubangbang

I work with traditional Ink on mineral paper. Ink is my favorite drawing medium because like life it is unforgiving in nature and the harshness of one’s mistakes can linger within the work itself.

Maggotland

Abbie Hart there is shit in the sink as there was shit on the bathroom floor and someone has added a new sign to scold the perpetrator but this is the maggot’s land now and he has decided that he has waited long enough. communal sink become wasteland. wasteland come back to maggot. maggot come back to earth. earth come back to food. food come back to communal sink. communal sink come back to wasteland. wasteland goes to maggot. wasteland always goes to maggot.

The Waffle House Speaks Nothing of Nourishment

Esther Sadoff

And yet I’m nourished by shoulder-to-shoulder contact, a wind outside flaring under the yellow awning, a fountain of syrup slipping through the once-shiny hatch of the amber bottle, and I’m perched on a distant nook in my mind. I wonder who is pulling the strings, making these limbs move, making my eyes open and shut like window blinds. I always imagined some smaller, better person pulling the levers and pressing the gas to make me go. I want to order banana pancakes with crumbled walnuts and whipped cream, but I hold myself in, pretend my mouth is decoration. When I open my lips, another voice comes out, the self I’m striving for, a voice as thin as the string that binds me from lips to heart to feet. I want someone to lead me. I want someone to tell me where to go. I want to feed a body. I want a body worth feeding.