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Short Form

The Fat Black Woman Performs a Vanishing Act

5/31/2023

1 Comment

 

by Keisha Cassel


            after Grace Nichols 

The fat black woman enters from stage left and walks to center stage.

            Tonight, I will not need an assist.
My grand display only needs a body

            and a long history of people begging you to destroy
said body. And as for materials, darling, all these things 
            will reveal themselves. Disappearing takes 
a little time and a powerful desire: the will to be no more. 
            Take a seat and enjoy the journey, the story, the sleight of hand.

The fat black woman pulls a chair from behind her back and sits.

As a young girl, I would hold various knives 
            ​and run them across my arm. However, did I resist 
that opportunity to vanish? The longer I perform, 
            the more I notice people look past me. Foolish of me 
to believe that I am more than the history of cruelty embodied. 
            Imagine wanting to be more than the rolls on your back.

The fat black woman stands and starts to dance around the stage gracefully.

No performer is above a bit of vanity. 
            We’re all attempting to feed the snarling beast within us. 
Perhaps, I’ve spent too much time on subjects you can’t handle. 
            Or maybe that’s just a part of the show. The great stall, 
using words to bend time—it never gets old. 
            ​The way my body moves on stage unassisted, 
all muscle memory; even our flesh holds tight to history, 
            which runs deep within us and sleeps next to the beast 
surviving on leftover morsels. 

The fat black woman returns to the chair and climbs onto the chair to stand on one leg.

This part is the hardest.  Always slightly more than I am capable of. 
            Long ago, I’m sure I wanted to be someone’s darling, 
but these days that is more like a footnote in history.
            Not for lack of trying, but no one wants to hand you
their heart when they suspect you can’t handle your body. 
            This is where the assistant would be helpful, this dismount. 
I’ve learned hope is irrational; the only truth is time. 

The fat black woman stands on both legs and jumps.

                notice                                                 time 
 pass                                                                                        furthermore. 
i’ve come to believe               i                       am   allowed to exist. 
now                  the      reveal                                          , darling
         i use to measure             if the fingers on my hand 
would fit around my wrist                  a spectacle    a  lie     a history. 


The fat black woman has five minutes until the second seating, time 
            ​is slipping through you. Please check with the stagehands 
for notes from the first show. Generally, we want more, more. 

            People seem to enjoy it when you walk through darkness.
It’s as if they believe without it, they cease to exist.


The fat black woman enters from stage left and walks to center stage.

        
            i will not               
                                                            assist
 
                                    people begging     
                                                to destroy my body     

                        dar ing             me 
​

                                                            to be 
​

                                                no more.

Keisha is grappling with the mortifying idea of being known and sometimes writes poems.
Back to: Issue Nine
Next: Jeremy Radin
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Two PoemS

5/21/2023

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by Mackenzie Duan


Eyeline

Christmas Eve     power outage,
     wind heaving           like a throat. My body     
never ends. Traffic ribs
              the street, an orange omen.     
Any cavity     is a keyhole. I lock
         my eyes. In this dim,
the house is               anyone’s. No red
     calendars, miniature Buddhas,       painted 
money plants.        No mercy
    in spite of touch. Someone       in the world
    is dying. Like light.        It’ll pass.
Down the power lines,       a beating
        cavern of bats.       I want to drift
  like dark through     the blinds, 
like gills, gasping & muscled.         I want
  to love     a jammed signal. The clarity
of calamity, mirrors,        bluescreen. It’s hard to
       say where anyone will        land: the direction
  of bonfire smoke,     the misdirection of moons 
bowling over our roofs.             Countries kiss 
   each other’s eyelids,       islands. A gust
  of good night. Leafless trees             in love. Somewhere
the world is     still. It’ll pass.

Advice from Co-Star

My horoscope says: 
full disclosure, ripe fruit, long kiss.

Instead I am an unkissable green
strawberry. Briefly still. 

At the family reunion, I whet my hands
over the surface of the ice 

chest. Tsingtao beer caps like gold 
gunshot wounds. Full 

disclosure, my family
estrangement is so cliché 

that it embarrasses me
to describe it. A bowl

of frozen mangos approaches.
We will never talk enough

about time. The mangos
thaw & the sky today

has no depth. I ford
my relatives like a branch

brittling. Full disclosure,
I’ve never wanted

to be this close to death.
Enough is a kiss 

on the cheek. My grandfather still saves 
joke wrappers. 

My mother still kneads the mangos 
before first bite. 

I spent years jumping
ship, promising to never return

to these backroads. This bottlenecked
house. But here is the twine

that veins the tomato garden.
Here is the ruptured fly screen. 

The print of two deadlocked cyclers,
the sister who ripped out

her hair. Full disclosure.
I still want my kin to recall me

from the cliff. To plant me
like a flag,

a ripe kiss. O, how the living
grace me. How easy 

the mangos defrost, 
how silent my hands

skim over the ice.
Mackenzie Duan is a highschooler from the Bay Area. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Vagabond City Lit, Frontier Poetry, Electric Literature, and elsewhere.
Back to: Issue Nine
Next: Jonny Teklit
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GARDENIAS

5/21/2023

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by Caroline Rubin


The gardenias in my front yard
have lost their grace

their bodies like pages yellowed
in the feverish breath of a Florida summer.

I understand all beauty is finite.
Summers like breaking
waves age us, abrade our luster.

As a child I used to watch the flowers
float like imperfect angels–

I would comb
through their fragrant petals–
plucking tiny black beetles.

Today, there is an emptiness
inside me I cannot name–
frail beetles roam
the garden of my skin.

I have tried so hard to be
beautiful—I have forgotten
the taste of rain on my tongue–

What living thing
can claim the word beauty
as its own?

Caroline Rubin is a poet from Naples, Florida whose poetry has been published in Parallax Online, Navigating the Maze, the Jewish Literary Journal, and more. She is a graduate of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. Caroline’s work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the NCTE Achievement Awards in Writing. She will be attending Harvard College in the Fall of 2023. 
carolinerubin.com
Back to: Issue Nine
Next: Mackenzie Duan
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My Dentist Told me He Wanted to Live inside One of my Teeth

5/21/2023

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by Phoenix Tesni


He gave me no explanation why, just said
he’d be drilling a cavity and moving his sofa there.
A safe haven. We all want to escape sometimes, he said.
I get that. I sleep when my feelings get too big for me.
I sleep when I should be writing a letter to myself,
explaining all the things I forgive myself for being
and not-being. He said, YOU UNDERSTAND?
Now, you must sit still as I finish moving. I will
leave my shoes at the gum, and sanitize my hands
as I enter. He started drilling into the enamel,
and with large black shoes, entered my mouth
one step at a time. He told me that the sofa might
get stuck on the way, so I’d have to push it in with
my tongue. It’s been three days, and he shows no signs
of ever moving out. People tell me my breath
stinks and ask me, Did someone die in there?
I don’t know what to say. My tongue gets stuck 
more often than I can admit. I touch my mouth. 
I want him out, but I’m too scared to go to the dentist.

Phoenix Tesni (she/her) is a 23-year-old poet from New Delhi. A Best Small Fictions finalist, her work can also be found in Sage Cigarettes, Limelight Review, Verum Literary Press, celestite poetry, and many other places. Phee likes to dedicate her life to consuming and creating art, petting every cat she comes across, and having as much fun as she possibly can. You can find her at phoenixtesni.com or on Twitter/Instagram @PhoenixTesni.
Back to: Issue Nine
Next: Caroline Rubin
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On Helplessness

5/21/2023

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by Jeremy Radin


Today I saw a video of a man brandishing a baton
at a frightened family to keep them from entering,
after an afternoon of shopping, a parking structure,
because he & some other q-anon people had set up
a “defensive perimeter” around it while quarreling
with some antifascists, hurling bricks & fireworks
against each other’s makeshift riot shields outside
a mall in Kansas. I thought of you, the way you,
with such effulgent & ridiculous candor, upon​
losing your patience, would squat down & place
your hands on the earth & breathe in very deeply,
& when I’d ask what you were doing you told me
rooting out the frequency underneath our ruthless
frequencies & then you seemed to find it & closed
your eyes & let all of the air fall out of your mouth
like coils of piano wire for I want to say five or six
minutes, the pain pooling in thick strands around
your hands & feet, & I was astounded how absurd
you looked, absorbed in your silly ritual, making
such a spectacle of your self-care. & then there
was the evening we heard shouting & crashing
in the apartment above. We knocked on the door
& a college girl answered with blood in her eye,
her boyfriend skulking around behind her, I think
I could have handled him but you pulled him into
a strange embrace & we took the girl outside & she
said she should have asked before using his printer
& though we pleaded with her she told us not to
call the cops & we didn’t & she went back up.


​Jeremy Radin is a writer, actor, and teacher. His poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Offing, The Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012) and Dear Sal (Not A Cult, 2022). He is the founder and operator of Lanternist Creative Consulting, through which he coaches writers and performers. He likes to point at birds and try to remember their names. Follow him @germyradin
Back to: Issue Nine
Next: Phoenix Tesni
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Two Visual Poems

5/21/2023

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by Sarah J. Sloat


I Gratefully Bow Under One Condition

Picture

Fetch a Doctor

Picture
Both poems are sourced from Roughead, William. Classic Crimes. NYRB Classics, 2000.

Sarah J. Sloat is the author of Hotel Almighty from Sarabande Books. Sarah is originally from New Jersey but now lives in Europe. Her work has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Diagram​, and elsewhere. You can keep up with her at sarahjsloat.com, on Twitter at @SJSloat and Instagram at @sjane30.
Back to: Issue Nine
Next: Keisha Cassel
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I Never Learned How to LOve You

5/21/2023

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by Smile Ximai Jiang


without admitting defeat. Lying here, belly 
stretched taut beneath me: the way 
the cat rests without giving in 

to sleep. I sink to my knees, fold
my limbs against gauze. Hovering 
above mangled skin, 

you smear acid on my arm. As I prune
into linoleum, your skin leaves mine
once again. Touch, here--

what carelessness to say 
you have never been gentle
with my back against the fridge door,

knife’s edge. The last time we were here,
I roped my arms around you, tried to soften
my hands against your tinseled scales. The faltering 

circle of your arms not unlike our cat 
spilling into shadow. He coils his tail
around my feet, soaks himself in spit

leaking from a barbed tongue. Three summers ago, 
I hurled myself across the floor, hugged you 
for the first time in years. Your back against

my chest like some uneasy parenthesis, jagged
in the dark. My mouth empties itself of its tongue--
wait. I pull my knuckle out of its socket, 

push it back. You are my mother and 
the only thing keeping me alive. Love is
an inevitability I once knew:

the rasp of cicadas in summer. A tail
falls limp. Salt scabbing
​in the hollow of your throat. 

Smile Ximai Jiang is a poet from Shenzhen, China and resides in Massachusetts. Smile serves as an editor for Polyphony Lit and The Lumiere Review. She is a 2023 poetry mentee of The Adroit Journal’s Summer Mentorship Program under Mario Chard. Her work appears in Peach Mag, Palette Poetry, and Kissing Dynamite. Smile loves sumo oranges and her cat. She tweets at @smiii_jiang. 
Back to: Issue Nine
Next: Georgio Russel
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Relic

4/28/2023

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by Georgio Russell


My smallest brother remains 
          naked in the shrine of our childhood 

tub—it is the morning of the day he dies, 
          and he is singing so strong his neck veins 

are vivid, roaring out the gospel our father 
          ​plays daily on his soprano saxophone. 

While in song he soaps the decade 
          his body has managed, folds to drag 

a washrag along the hairless gleam 
          of his leg, then scrubs away the rheum 

crusted in each closed eye. The square 
          window above him holds the opening 

clouds, and he is standing netted in pure 
          sunlight, all brown skin and fleeting 

foam, the amber rays embracing him
          on my behalf. The doorway frames 

my brother, and I am still the teen 
          on this side of his steaming bath, 

still his waking audience, pressing 
          ​my school shirt over the croaking 

iron board, my bones stained well 
          by his solo—listen to this grooving boy, 

how he drum-slaps his slippery chest, 
          listen to this novice haunting, small 

and standing always at the center 
          of that rusting tub, in opera forever, 
​

his voice a tone-deaf breeze through
          the whole home, a sound that seeps 

deep into the yellow walls, preserved 
          ​in their pores, a score that will last my life.

Georgio Russell is a Bahamian writer and an alumnus of the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. He is a past winner of  the Peepal Tree Press Prize (2019), the Mervyn Morris Prize (2020), and  The Editors’ Prize for Magma Poetry (2022/23). He was shortlisted for the Frontier OPEN Prize 2022, and long-listed for the National Poetry Competition (2022) held by the Poetry Society. Russell was a featured poet for the British Council’s project, “Unwritten Poems: Exploring Caribbean Engagement in WW1.” His work has been published in Yolk Literary Magazine, PREE magazine, Frontier Poetry, The London Magazine, Magma, and he has work forthcoming in Cordite Poetry Review. He currently lives in Brampton, Ontario, where he teaches English for Educate Academy. Some of his favourite poets include Derek Walcott, Lorna Goodison, Ocean Vuong, Jane Hirshfield, and Roger Reeves.
Back to: Issue 9
Next: Sarah Sloat
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Love Letters from a Burning Planet

2/15/2023

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by MJ Gomez


                                 X
 
A dimpled boy told me what forever means.
 
                                IX
 
His whispers the crumbling
of language
and earth, revealing

                                                                                              the hallway
                                                                                              of mirrors,
the prayer beneath all prayer--
 
                  Stay. Take me by all my selves and show me.
                                    What a miracle it is to be understood.
                  How truth becomes song
                                                                  becomes willful forgetfulness.
 
                  Wind shackled to the throat
until it is time to let go—I send to you a songbird, hellfire
                  at its claws, a name
 
at the border
                  between sound and meaning.
 
                                VIII
 
Singing of light, but not of what follows.
Promises of strong coffee. The promise of forever
 
                  we break daily
 
                  over bread.
 
The truth is every promise has already borne too much of the world to last.
 
                                VII
 
And when they find us, sweetheart,
                                              we’ll be light and only--
 
                                  Light. The shrapnel,
                  ​not the fire it came from. What remains of devotion
 
                                  drips into an hour so beyond us
only the page survives.
                                                                 Crystallized flame
                                  on the bedroom floor.
 
Our hands clasped
in prayer, invoking a god’s name--
 
                                VI

Only we remember.
 
 
                                V
 
Picture the world made anew.
 
                                              The song escaping the burning
                  ​is inside every other song.
 
The lightest touch
                  ​brings out the wrong frequency. The undercurrent
                  condensing spent stardust.
 
Alive, the fire asks its surroundings
                                  how they want to be remembered.
 
                  ​At the lightest touch--
A planet ignites.
 
                                IV
 
A mother sings her only son to sleep. Only their embrace
                  ​                  ​                  ​                  ​  withstands the burning.
 
                                III
 
                                  Hear the glass--
Its shatter--
 
                  ​Singing all we know of always--
 
 
                                II
 
What we haven’t realized: the earth has said all that needs to be said.
 
This time, the earth chooses not to speak against the fire.
 
And we burn in silence.
 
                                ​I
 
When they lifted me to heaven
                  ​all I could think of was what I left behind.
 
The loneliness—called want, called daydream, called
choir—                   
                  ​                  ​         My tailbone an animal
                  ​cradled by an angel in freefall.
 
Holding the memory of sunlight
                  ​                  ​                  ​     folded into clay
until it is so dark
                  ​the body can only remember
through emptiness.
 
                  Even now, there are still parts of me
that have not touched the Sun.
                 
I send to you a flame
like a bullet
                                             repenting.

MJ Gomez is a young writer from the Philippines, currently based in Saudi Arabia. Pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English, they enjoy playing guitar on hot, sleepy days and stargazing through bus windows. Their work is featured in Healthline Zine, the Cloudscent Journal, the Lunar Journal, Lavender Bones Magazine, and others. You can find them on Twitter @bluejayverses!
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: Kara Knickerbocker 
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Lake Kariba, 2020

2/9/2023

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by Farai Chaka


​Our vision of summer       was sunken feet       sunlight
moths suspended over black water       mangoes
morning silence       evening prayer       absence of shadows
what we did not know was that a snake slithered on the beach
& died       skin alight with luster stretched like the heaven’s light
we scooped up to our faces and rinsed       in the mornings
we watched naked thighs & confused them for glory       desire
could never be pure like that       like a collage robbed of context
or the way sunsets unfolded all around blood red & unowned
when dusk washed over we felt clean & wanted       & somewhere
someone was dying & tearing & folding       when we gazed
across a flat plain scorched we thought the water was water       that
our bodies were the kind we tamed and understood when we speared
into water our bodies were crooked questions       unanswered
& somewhere       someone watched & did not speak

Farai Chaka is a writer from Harare, Zimbabwe. He is an avid reader who enjoys long walks and horror shows.
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: Aaliyah Daniels 
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  • about
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  • the latest
    • Issue Ten
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      • issue eight
      • Issue Nine
  • interviews
  • submit
  • support us