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.

Back to: Issue Nine

Next: Jeremy Radin

Back to: Issue Nine

Next: Jonny Teklit

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?

Back to: Issue Nine

Next: Mackenzie Duan

Back to: Issue Nine

Next: Caroline Rubin

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.

Back to: Issue Nine

Next: Phoenix Tesni

Back to: Issue Nine

Next: Keisha Cassel

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. 

Back to: Issue Nine

Next: Georgio Russel

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.

Back to: Issue 9

Next: Sarah Sloat

                                 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.

Back to: Issue Eight

Next: Kara Knickerbocker 

​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

Back to: Issue Eight

Next: Aaliyah Daniels