#nat. brut

[lifeinpoetry]

We are in the woods. I am talking to you. Look at my dazzling eyes. Do you remember what you did.

Maybe in the better world, you are listening.

I threw my cell phone in the well.

Maybe there there’s no remembering at all.

— Zefyr Lisowski, from “AFTER I BECOME WELL, I THROW MYSELF INTO THE WELL HOLE,” published in Nat. Brut

[natbrut]

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[lifeinpoetry]

                                                            what i want is not impact

                                                              but velocity   waking up

                                                          to you with morning   lying

                               permanence   suggestion of rest   a big bay

                                            window and excess of sunlight   no

                                              photosensitivity   the days to grow

                      longer   to shirk nightfall. everything is short-lived.

— Kinsey Cantrell, from “SICKNESS BEHAVIOR,” published in Nat. Brut

[lifeinpoetry]

the heart, a peeled citrus weeping ichor for the days when I must be my own mother & bed is a grave one day we will refuse to leave & bed is a womb we rise from daily, a grave we refuse

— heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, from “the dream (the bed),” published in Nat. Brut

[lifeinpoetry]

I don’t remember closing the self off like I have, but again I am tremulous and unforgiven.

— Jesse Rice-Evans, from “The Surge, or Remember the Time,” published in Nat. Brut

[lifeinpoetry]

Once, you told me I could be ugly, when I wanted—

hair dismal- damp, mournful— mouth a dark

nook under a tree where creatures hide:

night badgers, crickets, the bat- eared fox.

— Ina Cariño, from “Chimera,” published in Nat. Brut

[lifeinpoetry]

& did I invent my own despair

from sheer wanting to say

like you I have suffered.

— Shamala Gallagher, from “Hurricane Watch,” published in Nat. Brut

[lifeinpoetry]

have you / ever wanted / to be the cancer / & not / the soft feast / of organs?

Jody Chan, from “Telling my mother I’m not her daughter,” published in Nat. Brut