New People
My story is not my own
it is ours, sung from the mouth
of first nations, through generations
it somehow survived.
Cutting out their tongues
and filling my ears with lies
could not stop me from hearing it—
because this narrative exists
in the DNA that wraps itself
around my spine, and
no matter what you do
you cannot extinguish
what always is.
You can hear it in the Earth itself
as plant forms from previous worlds
spring up as new seeds, as dim
stars suddenly shine bright
lighting a secret path where
endangered species slouch
from barren forests
thought to have been
eliminated.
Can you hear it?
From a tiny island
in the middle of a great sea
bound by the continental shores
of white supremacy, a dark
primordial beat plays
in the hearts of those
who remember.
Past midnight
never knew
such silence.
The Disappearance Of The Inner Child
At 1AM I heard birds sing
and I knew you were gone.
You’d been courting the astral plane
and ultimately decided to remain.
You yearned for innocuous spaces
but could only find them
behind a series of
never-ending screens.
You leaving is not as painful
as not understanding
where you went.
The Awakening
That moment when you realize you have no female muses, and that your favorite books and films and songs and paintings were all created by men, and you feel guilty for being sad, for being angry, and you always tread lightly to avoid toes. You say no when you want to say yes, you keep your opinions to yourself and compare your success to that of other women, making sure to never take up space, you wait for approval to claim ownership of your very existence, eternally wounded by the word “crazy,” your survival is hinged upon control.
Then you collapse into a time where you begin to color outside the lines, staining white sheets with blood, you devote your time entirely to this art. You embrace the fickleness of the weather, aligning your thoughts with the rhythm of nature, and your sight fails you, so you feel your way through the dark, where you listen to your heart and tear down the fortress you’ve built around you, because the war against your body is now over, and in honor of this, you give yourself as a gift to the sea and wash upon a new shore, a message in a bottle, you say, “there are more.”
Karissa Lang is a writer from a tiny town in Texas who now calls Brooklyn, New York home. In her work she wrestles with the mother wound, ancestral grief, and nature. She also loves horror movies and maintains a cabinet full of herbal potions, and lives by two mantras: praxis makes perfect, and life is short, long live the work.
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