Poetry
"Zombie" Unquiet Minds: Youth Anthology of Art and Poetry. (excerpt from Pretty Delicate) I. You’re only ever half-here. Not just your hanging clothes— thin sheets over your body buried under blankets, scarves, fabric to warm you, weight you, your body, between worlds, hovering, a wispwhisper. Not just your hands, fingers transparent as moths’ wings plucking at raspberry fractals, their blood under your nails crushed between whorls, pressing, too much pressure. Not just your exposed jawline scudded over with hunger you can’t acknowledge in a place you can’t name: —stomach— only avoida void On your best days. [tl;dr A list of your super natural doppelgangers: ghost, vampire, zombie.] II. your skin shrunk, close against every bone, the hair on your arms growing,growing like a recent corpse purpled bruised. (you arent alive and i cant convince myself youre undead instead of regular dead) III. Ghosts haunt. Obviously. Haunting: a presence, a present presence. Doors slammed and an open-window chill. You don’t have the strength to haunt. Vampires hunt. Obviously. Hunting: to prey, to pray for prey. Mouth opened and lies spun. You don’t have the intelligence to hunt. Zombies hunger. But you already know this. IV. (did you know theres a difference between anorexia and anorexia nervosa the one you cant feel hunger hungry hungering the other you feel it all and still dont eat)
"Cumulonimbus" Unquiet Minds: Youth Anthology of Art and Poetry. Here, where we were, the world’s gotten too thick. Our horizon stutters carmine, coquelicot, confesses incapability over spun ink stains. Our air heaves, viscous exhalations, accusations in the rain always about to fall. And then, later, after, now. Cirrus strands as spiders webs stretch thin between lips cracked into crevasses up cheekbones. We were beautiful, here.
"William Head Penitentiary" Untethered, 4, no.2 The picnic table, a husk of cracked, salt-worn wood, its paint, a brittle onion skin branded by cuss words on struts bolted to concrete too near a chain-link fence. The lawn runs to the ocean, leaps over pebbles and prairie dog holes to the tide that drags lawn and table towards the cruise ships flaring like birthday candles.
"Ruminations on Setting as Narrated by an Anti-Social Vulture on a Bench Under a Tree while He Waits for His Dinner to Drop Dead Beside Him. (The Surrounding Birds are Healthy and the Vulture will Probably go Hungry Unless He Gets Off the Bench But He Pulled a Wing Muscle Yesterday)." Boston Accent Lit, no. 8. Shining sun beats down —that’s nothing new. Here grows a tree. Black birds press the splayed branches downwards. Crows. Or ravens. Or disfigured magpies. The birds are irrelevant.
"Lacewings" Hooligan Magazine, no. 18. Low tones strung through nights; the click of paper wings against eardrums, a pressure rises from my soles. I stay bent into myself. Gouge my orifices and peel back sun stung skin with nails brittle from cold.
"How Drafts Manifest." FOUND, Malform Press, limited-run chapbook. In the current debate —among editors— genetic criticism would be on the side of a social approach (rather than an intentional approach). The genetician considers the notion of intention with considerable suspicion (while the New Critics continue to ignore it). But the author’s intention appears as a fluctuating, time-bound transaction (a series of writing events and of external constraints, and provides no firm basis for —absolute— editorial decisions). Citation: Ferrer, Daniel. “Production, Invention, and Reproduction: Genetic vs. Textual Criticism.” Reimagining Textuality: Textual Studies in the Late Age of Print. Eds. Elizabeth Loizeaux and Neil Fraistat. The University of Wisconsin Press. n.d.