Literature Showcase

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Here are some of my recent literature favourites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

NinevehA grey whale fed me
From his stomach.
'Fuck off,'
He said to God
'And die.'
Sinking into his own world,
He became so many
inches of life that you would never know
he died.
In another story
he would have made it to the beach:
the hagfish would have never found him
and I would live in his eyes,
building rock pools
around noon and midnight.
I could have saved the city.

Marie AntoinetteMarie Antoinette
They gave me shoes, velvet heels that spun like windmills,
dribbles of satin, laces gossamer as imagined spider threads.
They designed me shoes to be orchids, bees drowsed around my feet. I give them names.
But they took my language, words shaped in my own tongue,
familiar as milk and bed.
The language they gave me, I never exactly knew what the words meant.
I pouted, smiled, fluttered my eyelashes until they were hummingbirds.
They murmured of people starving, bakeries hollow of flour,
echoes of the rights of the man. But they said not to worry. Silly things.
So we dressed as shepherdess, lambs washed until they were pillows.
Our crooks hooked the sun. They gave me extravagant pastries,
almond, cherry palaces in my mouth. I could not shape the names.
Then they showed me the cards that were circulating of me, the crowds howled when they saw them.
My face was a false moon on some other body.
This body was on all fours, someone thrusting inside into it.
I heard other wor
Aphrodite's DissertationThe sound of catamarans upon the foam,
the march of cavalry and weary knights
who lay their bodies down are coming home
to linens drying like a hundred kites;
if not for love, what force are sword and chain
that they may honor empires with their call,
if not for me, they all have died in vain
and made of Troy the laughingstock for all.
Indeed, your chamois shirts and littered socks,
the tender cartilage of tambourines,
unfinished wine, and little jew'llery box,
and dual hemispheres of nectarines—
belong to me alone in my design:
the air you breathe, your everything, is mine.

AdvertisementsShe was only six when the funeral homes started sending us advertisements, all competing with each other to be the best, to win her business. To win our business, more like; six is hardly old enough to understand what's going on. It's not old enough to understand why everyone is covering their mouths with their hands and failing to hold back tears when you walk into the room, or old enough to understand why people begin to outright sob when you start talking about what you want to be when you grow up. Once it was a doctor, before that it was a fairy princess, but right now it's a policewoman.
And of course all the children have heard about the funeral homes. Cold, nasty, make their business in knowing when people are going to die. Not how, as far as anyone can tell, just...when. A lot of kids have had relatives—great-aunts, great-uncles, maybe great-grandparents—start getting advertisements, maybe been shown them to know what to look out for, but not Anita. She
thyroidal cartilagei held a bird between my hands,
swallow's throat twitching in laryngeal spasms.
when i whispered gently,
lips millimeters from its ear,
'you are mine; there is nothing you can do'
it struggled, beak clicking like talon-fingernails on porcelain
i didn't mean to let it free, i swear.
it beat me back with a single shining look;
beaded gaze bruising, breaking capillaries and
bringing blood to the surface.
i would have gotten a black eye if i wasn't careful.
i wasn't.
careful, i mean. i was never careful.
with mirrored eyes i watched it fly,
wings beating in time to my heart.
my breath was a cloud of smoke,
droplets condensing in the air and
mingling with fog and foreign substances
and atmospheric debris from the
most recent vehicular excursions
it was a white day, with a white sky and
a lake of milk. i drank all of it,
particles of protein splashing onto my sunglasses.
and then i was alone:
no bird and no lake,
just an empty heart
and a stomach full of regrets and butterflies
i still

dysphoriaI pluck out my hair
pulling down my conscious
to the sores of dysphoria.
(this isn't what I'm meant to be)
growths sprout like blisters
on my chest;
they keep swelling
and it's cramped --
my torso isn't formed right
so I let my ribs wear an
organ-coating, binding me.
(I can hardly breathe,
but I'd love to taste the air)
my body is one itch I can't
scratch out and I can't
watch it peel away but
I still hope for that day.
(please let me tear off the
skin that feels so tight)
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We Poets Are Frustrated...We Poets Are Frustrated...
I am sure that you have all experienced this feeling:
A masterpiece eclipsed by the baying of a brat!
A raucous rhyme, so emotionally raw;
Shadowed by a child's melancholia...
Alone in the darkness, you lick your lips and growl.
Your anger, so evidently understandable; yet you forget your own abilities!
In despair, my dearest sibling, you have forgotten — yourself
Why fear an obstacle so easily overcome?
Why shred your works with such heavy tears?
Have you forgotten that we are the original craftsman?
Our tongues birthed as our chisels and axe!
We need only take these simple themes
And corrupt them with all our twisted fears...
This hatred inside of you, this bubble of frustration and anxiety —
Let it swell like a pus-filled abscess of anger!
And with your words unleash this vicarious plague!
Take the unblemished works that have scorned you,
And inject them with the very darkness of your soul!
Let bleeding lips,
One ChanceElliot is four. He watches his grandfather breathe out cigarette smoke in his creaking armchair. The living room is small enough to be heated by the portable radiator near his grandfather's slippers. When the old man realises his grandson waits for him, he begins.
"This is a ruined world, son. Diseased with hatred and war before you were born." He takes a drag on his cigarette and Elliot breathes in the coming smoke. "This world is dead, but I know there's another. We could go to it if we only knew the way." Elliot's grandfather smiles at his thoughts. "There's another place put aside for us. I'll find the door one day."
The radiator splutters to its death and the old man curses his misfortune.
Elliot is ten. His hair is in a ponytail because that's how his brother wears it and his big brother's the best. Nick Ward and his friends from the year above don't think so.
They grab Elliot as soon as he leaves the cubicle in the little boy's room and pushes him face first into a wall, holding

<da:thumb id="175154180"/> Up and Aparti.
I was four and you were two. My Ma says she remembers me saying how it was such a bother when we had a playdate because you'd take my animal crackers and mash them between your fingers and your mouth but you'd never eat any of them.
ii.
I was seven and you were five, and my Ma told me to find a rose to give to you so she could take a picture with her new camera. I couldn't find any, so I went to Old Alfred's field and picked a wildflower instead. But it had a bee, and you had allergies, and you stuffed the petals in my mouth after your Pa fixed you up with the Epipen.
iii.
I was twelve and you were ten. You went to a Catholic girls' school and you said if I kissed you on the mouth, you wouldn't tell my Pa about the magazines and the cigarettes you helped me steal; but you didn't tell me you would kiss back.
iv.
I was fifteen and you were thirteen, and even though we were tired from racing home on our bikes, you let me sneak you out into Old

ill-fitting hearts."Do you know why she's dying?"
"Do you?"
"Because I broke her heart. God, I feel so fucking bad about that."
"No she's stronger than most I know. She's dying because you told her to."
"What? No, that doesn't even make sense."
"Think about it. She would do anything, for you."
-
You were nineteen and fell for the girl with the ballet toes and unreliable heart. You were a robot, programed to say her name every time you were asked a question. And when you urged your feelings to a breaking point, you found her standing outside your door with an i-love-you note and a field of asymmetrical freckles. That was all you needed to get down on one knee.
-
"Remember on your birthday, how she blew out the candles for you?"
"Yeah, because she was everything I wanted. God was good to me last year, giving me my wish before I even saw the candles."
-
She had the kind of eye lashes that curl up naturally like spider limbs when they die but she would wear sleep like eyeliner to make her look sick and damag
A cappellaMy mother, a famous classical violinist in her day, was on her deathbed and I didn't care.  She was bedridden by the usual suspects, old age and a fall, and had been for many months when they called me.  "Come see her," they said.  "She'll pass on soon."  They told me the nurses played Tchaikovsky, her favorite.
"No," I said, and hung up the phone, slamming it against the wall, the cord jerking about in a wild dance.  I glared at my CD player, as though it would suddenly come to life with violin concertos, then grabbed my coat, and left the house.  
The critics never tired of saying she was passionate, that's what always got me.  I remember going to her concerts; it was true, she had the most intense face, and her rigid body echoed the tension and frenzy of the music she loved to play.  When she practiced, nothing could shake her from scales climbing, climbing, climbing.  As a child, I always imag



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