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MAN’S VOICE (still FATHER) (never on CAMERA)
She’ll eat anything
((And i will.
i hide cookies under the covers,
scarf stale cheerios i find in the cloakroom at school,
lick clean the foil of easter eggs fallen and forgotten then found
again in november or worse.
in this moment
[FREEZE]
i am {still} caught))
— It Begins at the Table c/o Many Wor(l)ds
my problem is that irene laid in the road
north of the schoolyard and refused to get up
till we told her we loved her. my problem is that my problem
will always be love.
— my problem is, after Claire Dederer c/o Graphic Violence
We sang because the road was long, and the day was. We sang because mom did and because it made her smile when we all joined in. We sang because she birthed us and chose us and taught us the song. We sang because we'd each known the meaning of silence, of a breath held in the quiet. We all knew alone.
— Faithless, I plead with The Father for Grace c/o The Midnight Mass Anthology
“The fallacy of restoration is that there is a time you can strip
the world back to find a perfect before. That he
can, with wire brush and varnish, make us perfect, make him
perfect, undo the damage done. That I
can, through determination and discipline, eat away
at myself until all offensive signs of Me are gone..”
— Rites of Restoration c/o Softblow
Before the surgery came the praise I'd been seeking and before that, the scale; afterward came the first good rain of fall. Through the worst of the healing, I sat on the front porch watching the hard packed dirt refuse the blessing and ducking your calls.
— Ter·ra·form·ing c/o The Bitchin’ Kitsch
responsible for male sex
for maintenance
of the seminal
body
for the eventual termination.
fusion may cause
— Transitive Erasures c/o Longleaf
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Promise there's an inch, and it means
for the needle; for my safety.
It means tell me I have enough of me
left.
— Intramuscular in ED Minor c/o Warning Lines
I once broke
a man between March and December, before my wisdom
teeth had yet cut. I have done unspeakable things
in the name of hunger. Others and my own. Mostly my own.
I am hungry now.
— Harpy c/o Crow & Cross Keys
to be human, especially to be woman, is to constantly be made aware of your inner workings, and it is here that Campbell and I find common ground. For example, “If they hatched, they’d consume whatever stuffing they found” (from “The Box”) feels decidedly accurate to anyone who has thought about the blood-to-breast-milk pipeline for even a second, and “Pino learned how to turn the material of his own birth in his new human hands, how to think of it as something else, how to feel at least a little bit better about it” (from “Pino”) was a lot for my discomfort with my own embodiment to have to read in a retelling of Pinocchio, and yet, in each of these stories Campbell has a very real, very present, facet of humanity she’s trying to make plain. To treat women as dolls is accepted but to treat dolls as women is grotesque and, well, that’s the sort of true statement about our times that makes you need to lie down.
— Review of Tara Campbell’s Cabinet of Wrath: a Doll Collection c/o trampset
Summer for us was 25¢ jumbo freezies from the corner store, every night another invented excuse to share a meal, and work parties to paint fences, weed and plant the gardens, or help someone move. It was people and more people everywhere. It was everything lent out and borrowed. It was food at the house that had it and waking up to new kids in your bed. It was a collective noun of the poor. Poverty is isolating from society at large, but when you’re in it, when you aim to survive it, you sure as shit learn to share.
The co-op was a revolving door of people and families who came and went as their fortunes turned. Everyone was family until they weren’t. We had kids stay with us, family move in, best friends move away in the night. It was dangerous to get attached, to make plans, to dream.
See, that was my childhood, understanding
everything would be temporary.
– “Dairy Queen”
Aren’t things just a little more precious if you know they can’t last?
A Review of Summertime Fine by Jason B Crawford c/o Overheard Lit
the through line of forgiveness for the self in here has kept this book bedside since I first brought it home. These poems are honest and brave and willing to show you the day to day ugly of living at war with your own brain (I wanted to not hurt/ anymore, my kneecaps/ halfway shattered, the/ dark consuming itself/ over and over again. Just/ once, I wanted reciprocity - When My First Boyfriend...). There's none of the ruthless 'it gets better!' glitter on your drowning that so often makes me feel worse. Instead we find a fierce defense of the struggling self, a collection that holds firm to some truths—that queer love is beautiful and just might save us, that today is today and tomorrow a mystery, that sometimes you don't have to accept it so much as just move on—while recognizing that the road will be slow going and hard, and maybe just finding the right company along the way is the key to getting through.
— Let Me Hold That for You: A Review of Topaz Winters’ PORTRAIT OF MY BODY AS A CRIME SCENE I’M STILL COMMITTING c/o Autofocus Lit