[CN: mention of rape/assault]
Ravenous Bird Brain
He thinks you’re a rape magnet,
a strangled portal for revenge,
but you aren’t. Really you are
a ruptured dome filled with crows.
A dream moving through a book
held by a local pagan,
in which every bookmark can fly
and bite the lines of what tried to kill it.
If he thought he could ban us for life,
wait until he sees all the pages under his bed
at night, crawling up the ceiling and then
dive bombing his ears.
Revising his neckline
into a pathogenic birdbath.
The only real way to sleep. Do you believe
rainbows come from atlas? So do stars
but stars are dead. So is God.
What sort of constellation
will forgive him or form a concentric shape
that rains down upon men?
in the house of my body the light is mostly low
the rooms filled with ghosts performing an orchestra
of sorrow about all the broken glass
once, in high school, a girl i had never talked to
taught me how she held her breath until she passed out.
“after the light goes dim, you don’t remember anything.”
in the rooms of my body i wander, shuffling papers into
boxes made of songs i can’t always remember the words to
because i held my breath so many times
once a man held my balled-up fist in his own and
compared it to the size of the human heart. i noticed
how he held them both and i could breathe
in the cathedral of my body undulating rays of light
spell hope on the cracked facade and sometimes
i remember the words to every song
Her debut poetry collection, Skeleton Parade, is available with Apep Publications.
She is Head Publicist and Social Media Manager for Animal Heart Press, and a contributing editor for Barren Magazine.
She can be followed at https://twitter.com/melablust.
Mirages
A house is not a terrapin
or a sailboat
or a maelstrom
The sunstorm that swindles
at midweek
sycamore green embossed on the heart
like sequins or worlds
In A Kidney Dish
Seventeen months and six days ago,
with practice that could only be attached
to a pair of nitrile gloves,
they pulled apart generations of stratified tissue,
classified the human from the mammal
and presented the results on a stainless steel tray.
Burn the Bloodstream
How can an odorless, yellow pill bring harm?
Every time you say no to food, you say yes to thin.
One felt good so she took another,
Eat clean, look lean.
not knowing two were an overdose.
Greasy fries or skinny thighs?
Continue reading “Burn the Bloodstream by Emma Lee”
Blood Magic
It was her first period for three months. Sitting on the lav with her knickers around her ankles and her knees falling apart, Mihaela saw the new slimness in her bare legs and grimaced. She thought of all the meals she’d missed since the promotion—the rushed breakfasts, the uneaten sandwiches, the insubstantial dinners—and how quickly it had become a matter of finding not the time but the inclination. Now she ate as irregularly and as little as she slept. No wonder her periods had stopped.
Continue reading “Blood Magic by Natasha C. Calder”
The Last Time It Bled
the last time I bled was when I stood on glass
the worst time I bled was when they put the scissors in my vagina
Continue reading “The Last Time It Bled by Emma SzH”
Denial in Cycles
girl born altered doomed a beast
the moon dies and
i’m not bleeding like i’m supposed to
Continue reading “Denial in Cycles by Mika Hrejsa”