#apogee journal

[mortalpractice]

— Lisbeth White, from “Fixed,” published in Apogee Journal

[mortalpractice]

Friendship is a place of rest. Sometimes sleep. What’s it look like to thrive in states of crisis? We body striation. We body overlap. Impossible friendships  at the  tip   tip  tipping point of melting.

Friendship is so romantic.

i am broken i am not you are broken no you aren’t

Please—

hold me in your arms through raven dark. We close our eyes to keep them

little spoon    big ladle    your tender arms    hold me

— xtian w, from “sleep theorem,” published in Apogee Journal

[mortalpractice]

please know there is a kindness to sweat. laid here as such i become/a lake. please read the gesture and return it

when you say you feel good in this world we make i say the feeling’s returned

how good it is to return, not as charity but of love

this feeling is not mutual but returned

— Imani Elizabeth Jackson, from “Slow Coup (for ancient music),” published in Apogee Journal

[mortalpractice]

after the fall

          after Hart Crane and Klaus Nomi

i put the anal back in bacchanal

i descend the tender foul all false fruit & bitter butter

bunker hunk, i lubba lub u hot like bone broth, jock rot

o, humanimal, i am hostile to ur harp & altar

i wanna wrastle, “no homo” wrastle-gracile, sussy

          u duckwalk unto me           noʎ oʇun ʞlɐʍʞɔnp ᴉ sɐ

♫ blundered onto love/ ding dong ♫

i vibe my own doting omen rode that dormant organ down

— shelley feller, published in Apogee Journal

[lifeinpoetry]

Here’s an antidote to survival: imagine a closeness where there was only cosmos.

Christina Olivares, from “Girl,” published in Apogee

[lifeinpoetry]

how he held my hands & told me / that Mozart’s father taught him to play / by breaking / his fingers each time a note fell wrong

i still find myself searching / for ghosts in the melody

— torrin a. greathouse, from “wind-chime aria [for four hands]” published in Apogee

[lifeinpoetry]

Listen:

a body born to be itself. Listen: my name in your mouth

a synonym for slaughter.

— Kristin Chang, from “Aftermath,” published in Apogee Journal

[lifeinpoetry]

Before I ever took the pills I took so much. So much was taken. I’m done. I’m here. A fish thrown back to the river can’t help but swallow fistfuls of self.

Shira Erlichman, from “Ode to Lithium #-18: Postscript to Mania,” published in Apogee