#muzzle magazine

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“is it ever too late? And he thought, mybabymybabymybabymybaby. I thought, please don’t die, look after yourself, let us heal ourselves, let me have some time now,”  

— Noorulain Noor  . . . This poem appeared in Muzzle Magazine, 2015. Shared here with deep gratitude.

[agirlnamedbone]

--pub. in Muzzle Magazine

[mortalpractice]

                                                    & what difference is there     in those things which we lose     & those things which decide     to gift us with a kind                           of feral silence?

— Hanif Abdurraqib, from “The Summer A Tribe Called Quest Broke Up,” published in Muzzle Magazine

[jaanedouyarehnedou]

a postcolonial portrait of the girl loving a girl

how our bodies domesticate                        disaster: by swallowing

another country’s rains.  By reining                        my jaw to the sea, my bones

lurched into boats.  My breasts bitten                        into apples.  My mother says

women who sleep with women are                        redundant: the body symmetrical

to its crime.  Between your knees,                        I mistake need for belief

in a father figure: once, we renamed                        our fathers by burning them

out of our bodies, smoking the sky                        into meat.  I have my father’s

name: 张, meaning archer.                        I consider coming clean

through your body like an arrow.  I consider                        the way we shape in bed, like the sea

has revised its shoreline & we must                        move accordingly.  According

to my mother, it is best for a woman                        to be thin, to eat without

waist.  It is best to pickle                        the tongue in pepper,

water & salt, to feed on silence.                        When I kiss you, I remember

every silence begins inside                        a mouth.  Everything edible

begins as a bird.  At night, birds                        peck eyeholes into the dark,

the way I have always watched                        women: in the distance

between a girl & herself                        is an entire body

of arrows, flesh pocketing                        its holes.  A girl castling

her voice into a throat                        of stone.  It is natural,

kissing you.  It is natural, tasting                        salt afterwards, tracing

where light through a window                        veins your body, its wanting

to reroute your blood                        someplace safe.

—K-Ming Chang 

[lookingatlilacs]

“look--how stupid we all are. so young and afraid of our lives.”

https://www.muzzlemagazine.com/j-david.html

[facinaoris]

Bettie Page and the Wisdom of Old Age, Anne Champion

[danielriddlerodriguez]

GHOST ALONE —Ali Shapiro eats breakfast for dinner, because what’s breakfast anyway, just a concept, like time, but not like decay, or taste. The stove is broken so Ghost sets the house on fire. What’s a house, anyway. Now it’s a stove. Alone, Ghost misses her own body the most, then everyone else’s bodies. She still feels hungry but these days it’s a diffuse thing, not delimited by any stomach, an atmosphere of appetite, the way the flames, all mouth, devour everything without explanation. Ghost burns the toast, accidentally whisks a wisp of herself into the eggs, scrambles them anyway. What’s a body, anyway.

[lifeinpoetry]

Yes, I can admit the world is beautiful, even if it’s difficult to live, like slicing your thumb on a toothed jewel.

— Maya Owen, from “Not So Long Ago, Girls Like Me Were Given Lobotomies,” published in Muzzle