Bodies

Other

1

 

Men prefer an island

With its beginning ended:

Undertones of waves

Trees overbended.

 

Men prefer a road

Circling, shell-like

Convex and fossiled

Forever winding inward.

 

Men prefer a woman

Limpid in sunlight

Held as a shell

On a...

Dorothy Livesay

Enigma

Who I am

depends on which side of my skin

you stand on.

 

In here

it’s all neurons firing

synapses telling stories

blood tracing ancestral histories

races blending in veins

truth obscured by memory.

 

Inside is all flux and flow

stillness and storms

contradiction –

...

Andrea Thompson
1967

Eclipse

In every which way, I am living

for potential. I’ve mined cadmium

enough to roulette with Death

and Mars, bloodshot brute,

is swollen in my honour.

My function is action —

to pummel through concrete

and machete hedges,

to shear the irresolute

with only wit and lichen-rich

perfume. Allow yourself...

Jessie Jones

My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears

My grandmother puts her feet in the sink

                  of the bathroom at Sears

to wash them in the ritual washing for prayer,

wudu,

because she has to pray in the store or miss

the mandatory prayer time for Muslims

She does it with great poise, balancing

herself with one plump matronly arm

against the...

Mohja Kahf

Mariah according to my yt mama

when I try to talk to my mom about what it was like

to grow up surrounded by yt people in the prairies

in the 80s though it seemed like the 50s

she tells me in a so-there tone

that Mariah is a mixee and that people love her

 

I tell my mom that Mariah has talked publicly

about feeling some type of way about

being what...

Mercedes Eng

Embarrased

i thought it was ok - i could understand the reasons

they said there might be young children or a nervous man seeing

this small piece of flesh that they weren’t quite expecting

so i whispered and tiptoed with nervous discretion

 

but after six months of her life spent sitting on lids

as she...

Hollie McNish

Un Docteur Anglophone Traduit Les Inquiétudes De Son Patient Avec Google/An English Speaking Doctor Translates the Concerns of his Patient with Google