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My Best Friend, the Pastor's Daughter, Tells Me She's Concerned

January 26, 2023
I’ll go to hell if I die right now, and she won’t have saved me. We’re hanging off a lone blue raft in an oval swimming pool. It’s true I’m foundat church on Sundays only aftersleepovers at her house. But I’m such a good churchgoerwhen I go—such a rapt listenerthe whole sermon, such a goodcomplimenter...

I'm Afraid I Can't Do That

January 12, 2023
Something about the celestial baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey only its head is the head of Stanley Kubrick it shoots lasers out of its eyes it speaks with the voice of Orson Welles. Something about how Kubrick Baby burst through the clouds like the Batwing and silhouetted itself against the full...

Still Hungry

January 12, 2023
We’re from where everyone’s meanto each other. We’re from Delaware.We are sitting in a bagel place inCharlottesville, VA, still early in ourtour of in-fighting and bullshit. Weare the Fleetwood Mac of obscureDIY bands no one will remember.Onwards. I fucking love being brownin this convenience store, nestledsomewhere in the Carolina mountains,already weary of side-eye racism.We smoke...

But Wasn't It Nice

January 12, 2023
Imagine a sex castle. Imaginea piecemeal man. It is science.Like a beam of pure anti-matter. The doctor takes two virgins,a shadowplay of rape. Magentaflips the Medusa switch and everyone is stone. Timefor the floorshow, the tyrantsays. Nineteen years old, I watch from the booth withshame and desire. Wet feathershang limp, mouths grace chests, lips spell...

Innocuous

January 12, 2023
Please allow me this one poem— I need to know whyshe keeps those scissorswith which her son slit his wrists, trims her bangs with them.To dull the weapon with use? Maybe the difference is he lived. If you had, maybe kniveswould just be knives. Please allow me this one poem,no matter how many times I...

Prehistory

January 12, 2023
It wasn’t special, I knew even thenas a high school freshman: just a fountainin the City of Fountains, in betweenoffice buildings and manicured lawns. But classical songs played from unseen speakersall night long. We’d go there before curfew— find someone who could drive to take us there— to the fountain’s edge for the sound of...

Katherine Howard Rehearses

January 12, 2023
“Katherine Howard . . . proved to have been not of pure and honest living . . . anunchaste woman . . . [therefore] guilty of high treason.”—Bill of attainder passed against the fifth queen of Henry VIII, 11 February 1542 I am seventeen this year, and whatdo I count as my own? Last week...

The Third Consort

January 12, 2023
Jane Seymour, the favorite (but onlyafter she died), married the king eleven daysfrom the day he beheadedher predecessor. Imagine a bride knowing that. It wasn’t rumor—Jane’s craving for quails and her obsessionswith soft pearls, yellow yolks. If she’d beenany other man’s wife, stuffingher cheeks would have been the singlemost scandalous thing about her.Did she even...

Mary Magdalene

January 12, 2023
after the portrait of Catherine of Aragon by Michael Sittow You don’t need to be up closeat the exhibit to see the Magdalene’s clothesare gorgeous—the rich blue mantleon her shoulder, and the white linen, pleated,almost invisible at her wrist. Her eyes,too, were rendered in this samefractured light. * If you know anything about Mary,you know...

As It's Rude to Not Partake

November 14, 2022
I’m sick but drinking Old Fashioneds anyway at the bar where we’ve come to meet your old friend and her new boyfriend, who tell us they’re getting married next June. It’s been less than a year, but when you know you know. Of course, we agree, smile, cheers. Her hand is on top of his...

The Origin of Thirst

November 14, 2022
long before my father was my father my mother was a lake everything that existed was water we are floating things who drink our mothers tied up in strings we sleep like eggs folded in on ourselves then we open flowers mother silk and fever the door is helpless the doctor’s will is to deliver...

Licorice Moon

November 14, 2022
My heart slopes back to the hellspace below the cellar stairs, the crag-ringed night —slatted, oblique, and creaking—of hag’s cradle. Persephone roars in the corner, requiring an exorcist at last—please come before the candle drips into tomorrow. I spin and spin, born of a sewing machine and a wheelbarrow, dead from an overabundance of bluebirds....