three poems
Abigail Stallings
EMOTION CASINO
welcome to your life
your face changes as you watch
outside the frame
among the distractions
you are right now
a body prone to emotion
Google Maps
attraction
you never
EMOTION CASINO
welcome to your life
your face changes as you watch
outside the frame
among the distractions
you are right now
a body prone to emotion
Google Maps
attraction
you never
I render a coin
for something
I forgot
the sky
scratching itself
into decency
when I
wake up
always rattling
around
in my skin
a new aesthetic
I
so long to call back
the first time the phone
rang i was beneath a
bridge when you rang
again the roar of cars and
cargo overhead made it too
loud to hear you sense of
sea partially
People are always saying...
Here come the ones who chose / the second option...
I want to be remembered like this: taut...
salat to define the terms of ritual
[adhan]
A calling, a culling, a billowing
minaret banner, a cigarette starter thrown
out a moving car window to prove a point.
I dreamed we were in a department store trying to buy you shoes.
My Brother’s Two Screams
I heard two screams from my bedroom. Outside,
my brother had killed his best friend. That day
the clouds stayed put. The trees swayed under
gentle winds, but not
NAME LIKE A GIRL
I am a girl named older. I get in the way
of my own sleeping. Not being average
like that house, full of triangular
objects, where I only know two
animals, a fish and a
I tried to write a warning
in chaste trees and pumpkin vines:
the worst men of our lives will return
to us in more ways than one.
Preordained,
here is my chest here is where I remember longing has not visited me in a long time longing who I let inside me longing who I let cut my hair with old scissors longing who feels my feet swell and
for virginia
I threw in an extra fuck because it’s spring
I threw in an extra fuck because the long before is here
I threw in an extra fuck because the riveting scene is
Ghosts remove fishhooks from animal bodies
in the desolation outside an empty house.
Somewhere between a fortress & forest
cicadas shed skin & leave exoskeletons
on tree barks.
i don't know how to manage time
the same way i manage my
body
away from men
and their hands and their will and their need
to take me when i'm choosing eggs, when i'm walking
to the bus,
The predominant inquisitor of women accused of witchcraft, it is theorized, was a sadist with acousticophilia: a fetishist aroused by the infliction of pain, humiliation and their associated
Love is like a museum. You have to look around, experience things, and then leave.
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