Ginny

No one told us we would have to mourn the day of our birth, because it really was only one day, and so it didn’t last that long. No one told us there would come a day our mother would rue to us the pungent slime of bouquet stems weeks after our birth, that day when she mourned her body and had begun to meld her plans for ours. We would wait until we were the age she was when she had us when she told us loss was life’s constant: The loss of a day. The mourning of a time

You were not some steppingstone. You were not some era nor a blemish; not some dybbuk in a filthy box that collects dust and ire in the farthest reaches of my mind. You are no tool, no example nor lesson. You are instead a fiery emblem and a gift: one hundred petals unfurled and alight

Someone asked, “Could you write me a book of poetry by hand?” I gave it to them but I bound it with the ropes I use to bind me: My torso hangs akimbo like a masterpiece in butchered pieces— suspended— some consider it perverted; others a knotted ballet— I consider it a job, binding my heart up like any self-proclaimed artist or deviant would. You should know by now that I am bound hard and fast, too, within a proverbial Chinese finger trap: Push closer! You yell, but I tug

HYPERDOC PIECE (click words) An aging art critic shuffled through the Tate, stomach rumbling, seeking something to chew on. Maybe the bubbled umber skin of Jeff Koons' Basketball-in-Tank, or, better, a steak carved from Damien Hirst’s Shark-in-Tank. It all gave off the same pretentious rubbery flavor, though, as the billion-dollar Matisse escargot that audiences flocked for—and that one didn’t even come with its own takeout box; not yet. Giacometti's gaunt figures were far fr

An early memory of my Lithuanian grandmother blowing the warmth from an egg with a straw My deprived longing for her simple caresses which she expressed only with crayon wax, controlled, gliding strokes across an ostrich eggshell While watching her adeptly etching with all her affection Diasporic Lugan with knowledge of Easter eggs sharp as needles with which she afflicted their plump promise, she could relate to them: she had been stuck and drained, too. But she had surv

Sweetened-up strings hold fast to your fingers—you hear resonance like a false harmonic when they unstick. You hammer wrought-iron fingertips into its long neck’s ebony; the vibration through your knuckles rings familiar and mechanical. Its voice is husky and doleful like a drowsy lover. Punctuating your collective frustration, you draw the bow in a quick chop in front of the bridge. You peer through its f-hole (you’re intimate). Amidst wisps of dust hides a deceased Czech’

AI can never be as alive or as culturally deviant as we endeavor to be. It can never achieve our lived experiences, and so it does not have the power to take our voices away. It doesn’t understand. It sets a higher bar for all writers linguistically, but it will never take away the souls of the living. In the real world, it reveals ever-darkening corners within corporations' greed. When it comes to independent artists, it could advance us, at a cost. AI, like most artists, i

All the dreams you had for other people Are coming true for you, today: Photographed against a white background, like a word printed for the first time you experience Nothingness and its peace, like stale public air in the back of a Crown Victoria or behind a locked aluminum door. from your snitched pulpit, watching the others spin from self-wished futures emblazoned with bitten tongues on fire, you wonder with anxious burden what you have, in ignorance, stolen in the high-vi

Hey! split the night with razor feathers lap and tear the damp forging onward, no face, indeterminate flourishes and endless collision, cold and warm fronts eddying and whipping in frigid vortexes, famished for being vacuumed words suspended in pregnant air, operators vibrating, functions print(“saltando!”), keywords col legno; a waterfall of arithmetic plucked like a cat-gut. it dances in place, sinew wound tight to stone pegs and a liquid neck. it can’t paint secrecy wit

As if nothing were new anymore, Except for the world ending— You remarked, your hands outstretched to usher a popping, crackling host, Alive, to your tongue. As if the world were ending, Accept departure and give me your body. It is the whisper I heard on A vast and ebbing wind.

There you go again, blasting Arcade Fire's The Suburbs on headphones that betray all privacy! Your nose deep on the opposite side of a Pop Socket, you wonder, listless, when life might serve to entertain… The carrots and ranch you roll over your tongue are zesty Midwest ambrosia, your egg-crate mattress topper a cumulus throne. You’re itching for a goddess or some earthly nymph, but all who call upon you are those with zest for: board game, "pupper," 40oz water bottle, beat

It was the first day of the fifth week that the sirens rang to signal soft lockdown. Through the pallid haze outside my front windows, the sidewalks and motorways were as barren as the air itself. Veins of smog whipped in the wind like streaks of gray oil, racing through alleys and twirling skywards. It could have been beautiful. In the nude I crunched through cat litter crystals to my bedroom, which faced an old folks’ home and a smattering of windows above a dingy alley. Ou