January 23rd, 2021
Wide Eyed
I get disheartened when an artist tells
me they’re bored. It’s especially brutal
if I’ve adored you and the art propels
my own rhetoric, research,
collections of folders some might besmirch. I think
Stanley Kubrick would have approved though I’ve
no warehouse of boxes when I’m extinct
to prove my passion for working still thrives
between poems and books. We live
amidst fascinations. If we stay spry,
wide eyed enough, work is transformative.
Suture eyes shut someday after I die
with the stories I’ve written, some I hoard.
I’ll die exhausted. I never lived bored.
January 17th, 2021
Big Teeth
Deep in the forest in a flannel nightdress,
a little girl lingers without much on
her chest, shame in her heart, much to confess.
Here she is safe, completely at rest. Gone
the behemoths of yesteryear. Her cheek
on chenille, her brain bereft of all fear
inside this night sans starlight except a meek
constellation of which faithfully appears
from a bedside nightlight replacing a moon
which made her weep more nights than swoon. Tonight
she looks no father than this light of her room
which is not a metaphor — means to write.
No beseeching big teeth inside these woods —
it ends with her pen like make believe should.
December 6th, 2020
Hirsute
In middle school, bullied for body hair.
Matched hair, eyes, contrasted fair skin, a shroud
I wear everywhere. Was so scared
to shave above the knee. Was told no one
should look there anyway. Was whispered of
so many days in locker rooms by some
with blonde peach fuzz which was what love
looked like, at this time, to me, Florida
yellow/tan uniformity. Was called
a fiend, witch from another place, not of
the beach I breach, a plaited pouting pall
their boyfriends chased, animal they want to taste,
shadow to hide inside this golden place.
November 21st, 2020
Radiant Heat
This is the time of day sunbeams cross my
mattress, imprison flesh atop its breadth.
Each breath, bee balm, bids eyelash butterflies
vibrate; no body lies in wait bereft
its pleasures just because it is alone
but moans all illuminations shone through nude
windows. Your radiant heat upon bones,
Continue reading “Womannotated – Radiant Heat”
Bower
I am the tree arched over your yard
abrading sky above the shards of what once
were contents of your Instagram life, guarded-
by-Doberman duplicitous wife, crunched
digital frames, board games amidst piled piss
yellow leaves. I have outlived any you grieve.
Continue reading “Womannotated – Bower”
August 9th, 2020
Crow Castle
Each maiden slumbers in her childhood bed.
Crow collects a lock from each, twines a nest
with garden twigs, hair ribbons azure, red—
sufficient room for one without a guest. Continue reading “Womannotated – Crow Castle”
Pain rests within me like toxic algal bloom in the wine-dark sea. It courses through my body fleshing out the contours of a poetic impulse akin to renaturation, it screams in color—it screams in Homer’s presumed absence of blue. On some nights, it resurfaces the mind-body problem and reshapes it into a pseudo-debate before my eyes, into something that in its strive to go beyond experience, beyond the place where reason and intellect reside, erases itself in chaotic movement. In the midst of a flare-up, the mind-body dualism mutates into an illusion—illness both becomes and expunges the hyphen. And henceforth, it would seem that the ontological problem of hurting and aching and throbbing gains a curious and rather tragic destiny as well: that of being able to exist and be established solely at the cost of illusions, at the cost of reason’s chimeras. That of being unable to possess clarity except by analyzing its own decomposition, by disintegrating and dissipating its own chimeras, and thus obliterating all fantasies. Vertical like a pendulum’s rod, I let myself be worked on by death.[1] Pain possesses and abandons my body at will. Before my eyes, philosophical creation becomes neuropathically synonymous with the confusion of the patient.
Continue reading “PATHOGENESIS by Christina Tudor-Sideri”
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
essay: Insipid / Intrepid
As the adventurous person talks on, I am struck by a sense that they are confident and unperturbed by minor setbacks. I find myself specifically interested in the banal logistics of what it means to be that way, more than being interested in their actual stories. I feel that there’s no way for me to think cleverly about what it means to live an interesting life, or what it means to be fluid and graceful as you move through the world. Continue reading “Essay by Rosa Jones”
The following is a brand new poem written for The Meadow, my bdsm themed poetry collection about my time in the world of bdsm as a young woman. I wrote this piece as well as the Reader’s Guide I published below to enhance your pleasure and understanding of the text. Order your own Meadow at apeppublications.com.
Underneath
Before you call yourself a womanchild,
you fly to New York City, college girl
costumed to be defiled, pigtailed, beguiled
before a bedtime story, too. A whirl-
wind trip in which he will present to you
Red, topsy-turvy, Riding Hood one night, Continue reading “Womannotated – Underneath”
Photo by Naomi August on Unsplash
story: The Dog
Their clothes are ironed on them in the shape of death. Soggy bread of a sky looking over, he gargles time release capsules. Not enough pills milled for the morning after. The frosted flakes expired; he flops between her shrubbery, bulge withering beneath a dress. “It’s no longer in style to be a bad lay,” she says. He vows to return her to the urn, drops her off for cognitive behaviorals instead. “Listen to a woman once and you become her therapy dog,” his mother always said, teeth gnawing through his skull like fly eggs, speaking through a bisection of his face in swarms. “We’re all Satan’s puppet, a populace atop the hoof.” He hears her talk to the shrink through walls so thin he wishes they were her clothes. He tends to end up overacting in the bear costume she makes him wear. They’ve been brining bite marks on each other. In utter silence their chalky mouths resemble apple seeds, if worms took the core. “What eats the worms after they eat us?” Entwined guts, reshuffling microbiomes a couple viruses at a time, they’re not worth the ekphrastic flesh of their penny masks.
Dirty Dancing Saves Your Life
When you are raised by fundamentalists,
at slumber parties you resist. Approved-
of-girl, goes to your church, sly fantasist
whom no one hurts, her mom insists
you stay the night — both look sufficiently up-
tight, lacy collars, skirts below the knee.
Continue reading “Womannotated, Dirty Dancing Saves Your Life”
of two orders
something else entirely. some other thing to see. not only at night or when lost in the basements of this world but in the bright day. in the brightness of the day. to see something else among the common. to see something else even there in the light in the house in the street. something revealed. something that in the past might have inspired a new line. a new belief. to see it. so that two visions could hold me. that of the eyes and that of this other sight. whatever it might be. whatever it might have been. Continue reading “of two orders by Clark Chatlain”
KETA-ME: My Ketamine Experience
I’m not certain of the order of each moment once the ketamine infusion began. But I do feel certain that I was aware of everything that was happening and that I was consciously guiding my experience and my thoughts while this mind-altering drug was filtering through my bloodstream. This, of course, stems from my penchant for controlling everything. Continue reading “KETA-ME: My Ketamine Experience by Joseph Ellison Brockway”
I Was Blythe
I would do anything to not be cute,
fifteen, though it’s, without dispute, what I am,
Blythe doll eyes, wide face, small limbs a brute
could hold in place with fingertips. Brown eyes Continue reading “Womannotated – I Was Blythe”
When I first decided to move from Austin, TX to Los Angeles, I was leaving behind my friends, family, two jobs, and cat all in Texas to go finish school in a big, new city. I was freshly single after a relationship of two years, and I felt isolated, alone, but empowered to say the least.
The week before I moved from Austin, I said several goodbyes. To the job I worked for 3 years, to my students who I worked with in an after-school program. I moved everything out of my apartment and picked myself up after long sad nights.
During this transition period, talking about all the swift changes and new rules of the adult world proved difficult. I was only beginning to learn how to navigate my own mental health, and I went through my days carrying the weight of the breakup pain plus the grief of moving while others appeared to function and lead happy, perfect lives. I watched my 4 year old cousin turn 5, and we painted his hair pink. I went to Chicago by myself to visit an old friend. I packed up my belongings and dealt with the process of moving like a grown woman. Continue reading “Big Moves/Changes/ Feelings by Lauren Weik”
Dollhouse Architect
Blueprinted girl rolled out wide to inspect
already torn, no one protects — and why
should this one be tasked to care or respect,
question a purpose plans specify Continue reading “womannotated – Dollhouse Architect”
Calpurnia
After Morticia Addams describing Wednesday’s
role model (“Wednesday’s great-aunt Calpurnia.
She was burned as a witch in 1706. They said she danced
naked in the town square and enslaved a minster ..
but don’t worry. We’ve told Wednesday: college first.”)
Young girls require a patron saint — aunt’s
abysmal ashes antiquate entwined,
Massachusetts grave, with God’s servant
whom she enslaved. Impious mind
in clerical cravat a town square dance
(performed in only raven plaits) bewitched Continue reading “Womannotated – Calpurnia”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 