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EMILY BARTON ALTMAN is the author of two chapbooks, “Bathymetry” (Present Tense Pamphlets, 2016) and “Alice Hangs Her Map” (dancing girl press, 2019). Recent poems are forthcoming or appear in La Vague, Bone Bouquet, Dreginald, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a Poets & Writers Amy Award and received her MFA from New York University. She is currently pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.
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ARISTILDE KIRBY is a being constellation of given human category [poet]. She has published this [Daisy & Catherine (Belladonna*)], that [Sonnet Infinitesimal / Material Girl (Black Warrior Review & Best American Experimental Writing 2020)], & the third [Daisy & Catherine². (Auric Press, Summer 2021)].
More contemporary affairs include this², [Mairead Connect Radio Club: Point A, a radio play for Montez Press Radio], that², [The Envoyelle: Notes on A Conditional Form, an essay on poetic form for Montez Press] & the third² [Crush Blossom / Crash Blossom, an essay about the global cut flower trade during the pandemic for Illiberal Arts, a group exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, curated by Kerstin Stakemeier & Anselm Franke.] She has a master’s degree from the Milton Avery Graduate School of The Arts, Bard College.
Weather
Upon the earth
I make orderly
Shapes. I miss the
Piles. Each
Attempt to clean
Halfhearted.
The weather is
Fucked. For years
I hate the wind. I
Follow suit, I suit
You best. I fear the
Lines come
Too closely. On weekends
The bureaucrats
Sift the sea
For hard plastics
Of various density, and
Similar size.
The figures
Disfigured by
Waves.
The fantasy
Of holding them
A shared leisure.
**
Sasha
The sight of
Cruel rain.
Exquisite display
Of spheres.
Mouth composed
Of scabs.
An eye for the
Wet window.
The sun slotted
Against time.
A curtain quilts
The light.
A good friend takes a
New job.
A good friend becomes
An administrator.
I am not
Too sick.
The device
Records well.
My mouth
Still hurts.
Together though
Not indoors.
The air does not
Move there.
Flowering stalks
Arrive useless.
Today is wrong for
My hair.
The sign I
Most control.
It is so wet
Out here.
Propagation will
Come simply.
Drawers full
Of shears.
I have not seen
Sasha today.
That is a
Pretty name.
Our administrator
Stays online.
She administrates
The chat.
Our administrator
Catches lies.
My face is
Still wet.
Sasha minds
The scabbing.
In the light my
Mouth hurts.
Sasha sews
A shade.
We sit beneath
The hedge.
We go outside
When able.
Out here there is
No administrator.
I do miss
My friend.
I guess we have
The hedge.
I assume we are
Still recorded.
The sun slights
The inverse.
The outdoors is
Too vulnerable.
My lit mouth
Now hurting.
We pocket
The seeds.
Sasha says some plants
Hate water.
Water hurts
The leaves.
I understand what
That means.
He has a thing
I want.
Only his name
Is feminine.
The curtains for
Shade indoors.
The administrator detects
My wanting.
I typed it without
Really thinking.
I turn want
For seeds.
We go outside to
Play rain.
When allowed it
Is easy.
Is this science
He asks.
**
Isabel
Common items in the common plot.
A meadow is some grass in place of water.
I resist the urge to google.
Nature is well organized.
You shouldn’t say that here.
I’m taught that common means to share.
It can also mean to burgle.
The water is still evident.
The ground harbors some sound.
By ground I meant earth.
I lie less in photographs.
The expression of my chest beneath wool.
A genuinely deranged landscape is the front yard.
It was so dark and they told me I was wet.
I don’t know how they knew.
They know everything, though.
Though in this case they were wrong.
It doesn’t matter I couldn’t prove it.
I don’t fuck them anymore.
Collection day comes and I have a basket now.
I’ve lived here long enough.
Trusting Isabel with my binding.
She carries my basket sometimes too.
She shows me the block function of some buttons.
I wrap everything now.
Why wouldn’t I.
How slight it all becomes.
How reduced in expression.
Isabel has inappropriate shoes for the wet earth.
She refracts my vocabulary.
The stupid moon is too bright.
The full neighborhood hardly cares.
The streets are patterned offensively.
Isabel takes my picture discreetly.
She knows the angle I prefer.
My hands are most visible.
Sorrel and strawberries where a shoulder was.
Basil treated to the wool of my chest.
She refers to me with this image only.
Thumbing the ground/earth and bound up.
**
Saint Gianna
An arrow
Of gulls.
Here as near
The sea
Now. A
Pink pill
Each
Morning.
My poems
Become so bare.
Routinely
Kept
Floorboards
Stained
For this
Season.
I stop
Bleeding
With a
Failure
Of pronoun.
When I
Start again
It is not
Of will. Evilness
Tints the
Moon. What’s left
Above
At least. The
Internet
Was designed
For reading
Reviews of
Medication.
The colors
Are perfect
This cycle.
The ground
The perfect
Sky. I keep
My poem
Bare.
Mimicry
No longer
Pleases me.
Survival
Is common
And also
Pleasurable.
I see
In terms of
Ovals. My
Figure being
Two. The day
Having one.
In hand
Another
Example
Not unlike
The waves
And their
Concentric
Manner. I am
For the first
Time overcome
By an urge
To swim. I find
It sickening
Though not
Yet excessive.
**
FMK
The introduction of a
Supervising order. Ceramic
Flower arrangement in
The vase. Real objects
Patrol the outdoors. I
Learn of shapes in the
Schoolhouse. Where
Else. The floor precedes
The wall projects
A roof upward three
Men constitute a
Set of people who go
Together. My insecure
Method rejects touch by
Way of demand. Where
It happened to my neck
A circle. My arm
A ring. That is they
Instruct what is.
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SCOUT KATHERINE TURKEL lives in Berkeley. Scout’s writing can be found in ZYZZYVA, The Spectacle, BAEST: a journal of queer forms & affects, and elsewhere.