Category: poem

Book Review: In the Soup by John Calderazzo

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BOOK REVIEW:
IN THE SOUP BY JOHN CALDERAZZO

A BOOK REVIEW BY SHELLI ROTTSCHAFER

Calderazzo is an accomplished Nature Writer and emeritus professor within the English Department at Colorado State University, Fort Collins.  In The Soup is his latest poetry collection.  Expressed in three sections Calderazzo relays how he feels, in the soup, in the thick of life-after-retirement on the “Big Day,” as he is “Gathering Voltage,” and one “Windy Day at the Dump.”

Calderazzo begins with his titular poem, “In the Soup” – a psychedelic homage to his inner-man found at the bottom of a can of turkey noodle soup.  Calderazzo ponders the ingredients. What makes a man, what makes the contents of life, what inspires our mindfulness?  The ensuing pages hope to reveal these answers.

PART I: BIG DAY

“Second Coming” wonders about our connection to fading stars and skies laden with floating feathers that cascade like snowfall (13).  Calderazzo takes up his lament for extinct and endangered species.  The Passenger pigeon, “that once blocked the sun” now, “bearing down on oblivion” (13).  Will their eradication be the future for howling wolves and roaring grizzlies?  The same goes for unshackled rivers, and sludge gray oceans.  What will their fate be as climate change deepens?  Some may deny these cause-and-consequence actions but, “even the wind-bitten crew of / the farthest-out whale boat… began to comprehend / what we had done” (14).  

In “The Secret Life of Mountains: Front Range of the Rockies,” Calderazzo explicates his home-place in a meditation of tercets:

Deep in,
a lupine meadow
scored with trails

softens, mists over,
dousing spot-fires
of glacier lilies (33).

It is Spring. The Front Range is emerging into new life.  The:

Pasque flowers
close their petals
like eyelids folding (33)

into meditation,
relieved from 
the trespass (34)

This is Calderazzo’s means of telling his reader to “Go lite” and “Think Like a Mountain” as Aldo Leopold implores.  Yet to also take on John Muir’s challenge, “The mountains are calling and I must go,” but do so with care in order to preserve their beauty, and to protect them from “boot scrape” and drone’s “beauty-lust” (34).

PART II: GATHERING VOLTAGE

“Way Stones” told in three numbered stanzas stories acts of subtle environmental activism.  Beginning with his friend who knocks over cairns – the way stones marking paths on trails.  His friend, who shakes his head in disgust and kicks the keystones which topple in disarray, demonstrating that he prefers, like Robert Frost, to take the road less travelled by.  However, Calderazzo actually doesn’t mind them.  The stone pyres, “suggest a tall dance / with gravity” marking where, “The trail / goes this way… [and] Death is that way” (43).  Calderazzo notes that in other lands, cairns value prayer, offer blessing, and lead the way, “A last ride / through the stars,” which is entirely a different matter.

Author John Calderazzo

PART III: WINDY DAY AT THE DUMP

“Windy Day at the Dump” is a necro-pastoral poem which details environmental decline’s  connection to humanity by listing the things discarded within a landfill.  The poem documents Calderazzo’s personal letting-go of things and moments in his life that now decay within the dump’s depths.  Medical records of a last parent to die, the draft of a youthful novel too embarrassing to recycle, love letters, a broken wall clock, a fizzling floor lamp.  These objects mark his passing of time and are his mile markers of maturation.  They are the cairns that lead the way to his end flight (68-69).

Calderazzo’s closing poem of his collection, “Passing through” is his quest through Wingo, Kentucky in search of his final resting place.  However, “The casket shop has moved” and so he decides to, “pass on a casket, thank you.”  Instead he chooses for his final destination to be a “high flower valley” surrounded by “peaks of snowlit fire.”  He prefers for his ashes to “zephyr off while friends & family / lift their arms & sing” (87).  And in this way those who would remember him, mimic his chosen poetic lineage as they burst into a Whitman-like mighty yawp.

Calderazzo’s collection, In The Soup (2025) by Middle Creek Publishing & Audio nods to his literary community and those who came before him.  Through this gathering, he enters their company, and encourages others to tell their stories, communicate to the public about the importance of wilderness preservation, and find those ancient cairns while trekking among high mountains around the world.

IN THE SOUP

BY JOHN CALDERAZZO

AVAILABLE NOW!

Shelli Rottschafer (she / her / ella) completed her doctorate from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2005) in Latin American Contemporary Literature. From 2006 until 2023 Rottschafer taught at a small liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a Professor of Spanish. She also holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry and coursework in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University (2025).

Shelli’s home state is Michigan, yet her wanderlust turns her gaze toward her new querencia within the Mountain West where she lives, loves, and writes in Louisville, Colorado and El Prado, Nuevo México with her partner, photographer Daniel Combs and their Pyrenees-Border Collie Rescue. 

Discover more of Shelli’s work at: www.shellirottschaferauthor.com

Book Review: compost your despair by hayden dansky

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Book Review: compost your despair by hayden dansky

A BOOK REVIEW BY LIZA SPARKS

Compost Your Despair is Hayden Dansky’s love letter to Palestine, community organizers, to the “queer and weird and trans and disabled,” to the “dark and indigenous,” to “those of us who live in liminal spaces, or are kin to it,” to their past self, to anyone who feels empathy, anyone with a heartbeat.

The speaker in these poems writes with a fierce urgency that begs us to pay attention and asks us to move our bodies towards action.

In “Now That I Have a Voice,” the speaker defiantly asserts:

So let them
Burn me
with the rest of them
Burn me like they did
my ancestors before time and place
made me white
Burn me like the heathen they call
me for my love, desire, joy
Burn me with the rest because
now that I have a voice
I will never close
my mouth

These poems tumble down the page like spoken word and it does feel like Dansky is speaking just to us. They capture our attention. They invite us in to the prayer. This poetry is a communal act—a protest poetry spoken on the street.

They write in, “Until They Hear Us:”

What else can we do
besides scream from every corner

There is not a lot of excess in these poems; there is not flowery language, sentimentality, romanticization of struggle. They write with a conversational language that seeks to be understood. In “Climate” they write:

it really, really matters how we treat
each other

There is the examination of complexity and Dansky struggles with their own positionality of privilege and oppression. They write:

Peace is a process of
relationship to self
just as much as
relationship to other.

They write, in regards to the ongoing genocide in Gaza,

I will scream that this is not
my Judaism.

These poems demand a megaphone.

There is not the promise of peace or justice, but an impulse towards it. In “Until They Hear Us,” the speaker repeats, “I will try” and “I can try.” It is a vulnerable and humble sentiment. In times like these, what else is there to do but try? Trying is the first step towards action.

There is a force in these poems that is driven by the musicality of repetition, like the drumbeat of “Burn me” in the final stanza of “Now That I Have a Voice.” The speaker is not afraid to write in defiance of powers that will oppress them and the people they love, and they will say it again.

In the poem, “Climate” the speaker struggles with the power of words. What can words actually do in “a burning world.” They write, “How can I trust these words.” Yet, Dansky is driven to speak, to write, and to share. There is a deep desire to be heard. There is a fierce drive to express.

Author Hayden Dansky

These poems bring to mind the Audre Lorde quote: “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” With that same sentiment—Dansky must speak, must write, must share.

There’s a hunger in the speaker to understand the past and the present, to make sense of the trauma and their position and responsibility.

In “Nex” there is a firm defiance against the powers of hate:

Our bodies are resistance.
Our love is survival.
Our identities are our anchors,
always in transition.

“Nex” is addressed to Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student, youth, and precious soul who died as the result of anti-LGBQTIA+ policies. Dansky’s poems do not exist merely on the page, but are in deep conversation with the world around them.

And although the world around them is apocalyptic, there is hope in these poems. In “A Pandemic Note to the Creative Organizers,” the speaker writes:

You are not alone.
When you listen
you will remember
you never have been.

and in “A Pandemic Note to Self,” the speaker asserts:

Fall into the earth like it’s your home
It has always been.

Dansky’s impulse towards social justice is driven by a deep love for their fellow humans and for the world. In “Gaza” they write:

called by a deep love
of all humanity
of a belief
that nobody will be free
until we all are.

Compost Your Despair asks the reader to look at their own privilege and positionality—What drives you? What moves you? What do you love?

In “Pride,” Dansky reminds us that

Pride is not complacency

our lives are choices
and we are choosing to stay

Dansky’s poetry asks the reader: What are you choosing to do with your life? What are you choosing to do with your voice?

compost your despair

BY HAYDEN DANSKY

AVAILABLE NOW!

Liza Sparks (she/her) is a student in the 2025-2026 Poetry Collective at The Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado. Liza follows her literary obsessions and collects books the way toddlers collect rocks and pinecones (beloved friends, sacred treasures). She is a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net nominee.

Book Review: Leaf Manifesto by Laurel Radzieski

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WILD NATURE, WILD WOMEN, A WILD ECOPOETICS:
LAUREL RADZIESKI’S LEAF MANIFESTO

A BOOK REVIEW BY SHELLI ROTTSCHAFER

Laurel Radzieski welds her pen to manifest an embodied poetics and advocacy for the wild.  Wild nature. Wild Women.  This collection is unique because she plays upon the page physically and artistically in form, as many of these poems take shape within female curves. The growth from within is her child, and in this way the verse thrives.

The collection follows a flora lifecycle.  Each section reminds the reader of this beginning to end:  Seed, Germination, Sprout, Seedling, Sapling, Tree, Flowering, and ultimately the tempestuous Fruit.  Radzieski sets out upon her poetics journey stating, “One day I said aloud / I might like to be a tree” (11) and so she entices her reader to figure out what this may mean.

Throughout Leaf Manifesto Radzieski prompts us with questions: “What is a woman?” (15). And provides multiple choice answers, that only lead to more internalized questions.  Through this feminist lens she taunts her reader to poke at their own preconceived perceptions.  “Who gets to be a woman?” (16).  “What use is a woman?” (17).  “What’s it like to be a woman?” (21).  Once again, she tests her reader through a True / False dichotomy.  She dares us to shade in our answer fully with a #2 Lead Pencil.

In “How to Identify as a Tree” (38), Radzieski considers identity, origin, and belonging.  “Consider what others would want to know about your bark patterns and inner rings.”  Yet how a tree-body-person may appear doesn’t describe the within.  Rather, “roots and family tree” nudge toward fuller truths.  Especially as it oft happens, “If you are on unseeded land, know the history of the ground, how it got that way.”  In this way, Radzieski alludes to those who came before us.  She acknowledges that the land of her manifesto is of indigenous origins and birthright.

Author Laurel Radzieski

Throughout her collection, Radzieski offers up Ven Diagrams.  In “Woman Tree” (69), she encloses what these two entities have in common: branches, limbs, mistakes, leaves, organs, roots, flesh, rings, family, pain, and flowers.”  At least with this last word, she ends on hope.

Radzieski’s final poem in the collection, “Past Life Regression” (121) is a haiku:

Fallen walnut.  Such
a long way down, but then
soft idea of grass.

This seasonal form representing a walnut tree’s lifespan, culminates in a fruit-nut’s finality.  Not eaten, but allowed to cascade to an end-place.  Tranquility lands in grass.  Her bed, which begins again the tree’s lifecycle as the seed buries into soil knowing she will sprout once more. 

Laurel Radzieski won the Halycon Award from Middle Creek Publishing & Audio for this collection.  It is her second full collection of poetry.  Other poems have found a home in Rust + Moth, The New Your Quarterly, and Atlas.  She lives in Reading, Pennsylvania and is the Director of Grants at Alvernia University.

LEAF MANIFESTO

BY LAUREL RADZIESKI

AVAILABLE NOW!

Shelli Rottschafer (she / her / ella) completed her doctorate from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2005) in Latin American Contemporary Literature. From 2006 until 2023 Rottschafer taught at a small liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a Professor of Spanish. She also holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry and coursework in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University (2025).

Shelli’s home state is Michigan, yet her wanderlust turns her gaze toward her new querencia within the Mountain West where she lives, loves, and writes in Louisville, Colorado and El Prado, Nuevo México with her partner, photographer Daniel Combs and their Pyrenees-Border Collie Rescue. 

Discover more of Shelli’s work at: www.shellirottschaferauthor.com

Three Poems // Wheeler Light

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Image: Louis K. Harlow

I DO NOT CARE IF YOU ARE ACROSS THE COUNTRY

BY WHEELER LIGHT

or down the country, or around the country.
The country, an exercise in understanding the space

of the country. I do not care if you are my friend
or my best friend or a collection of memories

I can talk to about the memories you are.
I do not care about meaning or anger

or hope or apocalypse when I care about laughter.
I do not care if it makes sense to call you

too many times in a day until you pick up
to tell you a joke you will like and laugh and laugh.

What I care about is distance as a measure
of effort to overcome said distance. If the distance

between us is the country, then the effort
is the world. You are a world away. I am

a world away. When I stare into the middle
of nowhere, you are there laughing at the joke

I traveled around the world to tell you.

THE BAD NEWS

BY WHEELER LIGHT

You wake up
knowing nothing.

The day, the shape
of a chrysanthemum

bell. Unraveling
is the start

of eventually hoping.
Oh, I too mistake

disaster
for salvation.

I take my medication
the same as anyone else,

staring at myself
in the bathroom mirror

to see what I recognize.
My actions reflected—

the bad news
is the actions.

The good news
is the reflecting.

Mistaking the self
for its consequences.

Mistaking the self
for anything at all.

The bad news
is the self.

The good news
is waiting at the end

of the illuminating
hallway of you.

SAWMILL RUN

BY WHEELER LIGHT

Writing about a mountain
because there is a mountain.

Photographs of the mountain
capture more than words

can carve out of enjambment’s
live edge. Oranges and reds

at the end of fall litter
my eyes with the image

I try to translate into imagery.
Can’t you see the green

peeking between naked birch
trees? The sun reflecting off

the fog blanketing everything?
A photograph is a headstone

which mourns the moment
it was taken. Up the road,

there is another overlook
and another. Different angles

to view the jagged document
of time, these peaks erupting

and softening over enough millennia,
their existence nearly makes you forget

dry brush, pipelines, controlled
burns, doe crossing the road doesn’t

make it. The present, a cloud of smoke
invisible behind the cliff in the distance.

Writing about the earth
because there is the earth

cracking its knuckles
and arching its back.

At the overlook, I get out of the car
and step on a pile of broken glass.

Wheeler Light received his MFA in creative writing from University of Virginia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Barely South, and Allium, among other publications. You can find his poems at www.wheelerlight.net.

Sinew // Three Poems by KD Hack

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Image: David Young
EDITOR’S NOTE: THESE POEMS ARE BEST READ
ON TEXT OR HORIZONTALLY ON A MOBILE DEVICE.

LAGNIAPPE

BY KD HACK

I could’ve held you / the whole night / through / the wilderness / of my body-mind / asks /
too many questions / but I am parched / & prefer / too many answers / meet me / at every
river bank / along the Mississippi / your name / a prayer / my name / a promise / your kiss / a
wish / it’s good medicine / it’s my command / teach me / something sweet / something
mother-father-auntie-grandma / tongue / I want / the knowledge / to blacken on / my tongue
/ I want / the taste / to linger / the lagniappe / of a love / freshwater / & somehow / still
molten / I molted / here / on these rocks / slippery / but not too heavy / to hold /  I will bring
them / back / to you / like precious stones / like something / we might build with / the levees
won’t break / there / the gumbo will be / glorious / & the bowls / never empty / bring your
spoons / bring your lover’s lover / bring your appetite / bottomless / as the river / where we
sent up Hail Marys / like shooting stars / fletting but full / of feeling / a feast / we won’t soon
forget.

DIOSCOREA POLYSTACHYA

BY KD HACK
Fairy 
as in 
frolick 
as in 
               lick
my faggity ass
while you’re at it 
we’re all wild
	here 
& freer
than 
they want us 
to think 
when the water 
grew 
too frigid to dip 
a toe into 
my friend 
               fluorescent 
in the finger-smudged 
mirror made 
             a man 
out of mascara 
& might 
& I might not be
convincing anyone 
but myself 
but you 
can kiss
my faggity ass 
& even my lips
while you’re at it
I promise
I won’t bite 
unless you ask
	nightly 
I wish 
for whiskers 
I whisper 
in their ear  
let me 
              come 
nearer 
let me 
             come
closer
to the fairy prince
I promised 
to be 
in the woods
where we dug
our faggity fingers
in the soil
in the seams 
making streams
across our bodies
I’d dig a grave
in the space 
	      between
your breasts 
& your	belly 
my legs melt 
into jelly
when you lick me
	       hard
enough 
this is not 
a metaphor
this is not 
a death wish
this is 
a grave 
I’m digging 
down where 
the fairy potatoes 
grow I am not 
asking 
you to 
             die 
but to be
	      reborn
beneath the soil
I’ll meet you 
down there
soon.

BLOOD MOON

BY KD HACK
Blood Moon

KD Hack is a Queer/Trans writer, Death Doula & land steward. Their artistic practices were nourished across the Northwoods of Wisconsin, & reside in the spaces between fingers in the soil & pencils on the page. His work is featured in Peach Fuzz, Fruitslice, Querencia Press, Transfix, Tence, & Volume One, among others.

Near the Rappahannock, Wellfleet Oysters // Jennifer Browne

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Image: Beatrice Bright

NEAR THE RAPPAHANNOCK, WELLFLEET OYSTERS

BY JENNIFER BROWNE

The liquor in an oyster is the brine
of the water-body held at harvest.
This river drains the Blue Ridge,
meets the Chesapeake with a sigh,
leaves a sweetness in the locals,
but on the new planks of Wellfleet
Harbor, I tasted your salt. Beloved,
that one word in the day’s chalk
floods the room with light. Could
I ever choose another having known
your waiting nacre, your shucked,
gleam-soft interior along my tongue?

Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After; In a Period of Absence, a Lake; whisper song; and The Salt of the Geologic World. Find more of her work at linktr.ee/jenniferabrowne.

for what do we sing if not flowers // Ally Eden

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Image: Soraya Silvestri

FOR WHAT DO WE SING IF NOT FLOWERS

BY ALLY EDEN
a bee slips and shifts over the face of water

tiny figures on the bridge beneath 	

lightning antlers watch the river 

growing rouge


i like august except sometimes

when newly softened leaves flutter 

dead by the rail-yard & earth’s last good leg 

brings down the sky like a marble fish 


we cling to what floats

	wifi 	tattered boards     pink sneakers

rising incense on an eerie blue morning

Ally Eden (Former Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, Colorado) writes poems that are vibrant, poignant & tender. Their work invites readers to conversations about current events while invoking reverence for humanity & nature. A Spanish interpreter by trade, Ally’s poetic ethos parallels her role as a linguist — bridging difference by way of words.

Two Poems // Monique Quintana

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Image: Karin Luts

MY FAMILY MADE A PACT WITH THE BEES

BY MONIQUE QUINTANA

and the hive is still there hanging over the washing machine. Expanding like my hair when I walk in the rain. In search of another man. Who wants to have an emotional affair? And fold clay into dinner cups and plates so we can playhouse. The bees listen to us murmur under the doorway, like a velvet blanket, I dragged from Cuetzalan. We make a cake and douse the windowsill flowers with imitation vanilla extract. I record myself talking for my She-Ra doll and try to make myself blonde. Learn the color of the maw under my nails when the wind bangs on my door at night, though I should be grateful. My sister says we’re going to The Continental grocery store on Blackstone Avenue, and I pack my bags because I want to cradle down in the fruit’s harvest. The misters wet my hair until it takes its natural bend. And I’m embarrassed by my hair even when I try not to be. Unhooking my feet from pomegranate shells never felt so lovely. Never felt so much like I am dolled fucked for sure. And you will have me for sure. I turn on the TV in my hotel room and catch a documentary about my colonizer ancestors blowing their busted hearts in the wind.

STAGE LOCKET

BY MONIQUE QUINTANA

Crow investigates the sea and begins to fight with his own reflection in the water. His sick self.  The crow twins are so engrossed in their arguing that they don’t notice that yellow roses have sprouted up from the water and all around them like a fence. The woman walking along the beach marvels at the scene and writes a list on her hand. A remedy. Snail pulse. A cloud beat. Salt around the eyes that becomes a mask. Crow pecks bone out of the sand with such ferocity that he makes a dress. Frightened by the art that he’s made, he abandons it there on the sand. The fragments tremble and ache. You, sister, pick up the dress, quick, your nails to the blue, and sigh because it would be unforgivable to rob our mother of her sea. Crow collects green bottle fragments until he has pieces to build a castle. Inside the castle, there is a papier mâché doll with black hair. The doll longs for a machine to take her to a table set with a warm bowl of soup with cilantro. To a brined kitchen. To clay parts. To a clock that resembles the ticking of a water bee.

Monique Quintana (She/Her/Hers) is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her work has been supported by Yaddo, The Community of Writers, Sundress Academy for the Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, and Storyknife. You can find her at moniquequintana.com and on Instagram and X @quintanagothic

II OF PENTACLES, EARTH [REVERSED] // leta iris

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Image: jötâkå

II OF PENTACLES, EARTH [REVERSED]

BY LETA IRIS
juggling the priorities of
my life, to an endless cycle of 
              t r y i n g
to catch each element and make it 
do tricks. to impress, to prove i am 
doing it (life) right, an example. the 
eldest daughter inside
of me dictates my 
ritualistic hunger to 
succeed,
to mean something.
each all fall and splatter
on the ground, one by one
like spoiled plums, purple 
ooze staining the earth below 
me

fruit flies circling to devour
my potential as i lap up any
remnants of the spoiled, moldy 
fruits of my wasted labor. dirt on 
my tongue, seeds between my 
teeth. fists clenched, knuckles 
bruised from grasping onto the 
flesh of my life until it seeps into

the concrete and i am just left 
with the pit, the center. me. at the 
core, i am stripped bare, an echo 
in a hollow body.

leta iris (she/they) is a bisexual, midwestern poet studying english, with a concentration in creative nonfiction and a minor in creative writing. she is the author of two poetry collections, when summer fades to fall and the fruits of her bittersweet sadness, left to rot. her piece, “animals,” was previously featured in the Experiences of Femininity exhibit at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, as well as several other small literary magazines. she enjoys caffeine, thrifting trinkets and collecting purses. you can usually find her beneath a fuzzy blanket, book in hand while cuddled up with her lifelong partner, cody, and her blue-heeler beagle mix, buffy. you can find more of her work on instagram, @tangledflxwers

Three Poems // Leo Rose Rodriguez

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Image: Sebastian Schuster

ONE FOOT IN THE NEW YEAR

BY LEO ROSE RODRIGUEZ

for Rosh HaShanah

I travel the earth
with one foot on each side
of gender, a border
as imaginary and dangerous
as any nation’s boundary,
no secure footing in either.
But most places I enter,
I have to choose anyway.
I don’t have time to explain
to the cab driver why my face
and name are at war. When I state myself,
who hears how carefully I’ve chosen?

I travel the line past the cop car
parked outside the synagogue,
past the greeters checking names
to deter intruders on our most
sacred day. I realize I’ve never asked
before if there are cop cars at Eid.
Would they be any protection?
And there is another unsteady stance:
one foot beneath the pile of bodies,
one foot on their necks.

Nobody gives a shit about your definition,
sometimes. A word means what
it always has to them. A name,
a curl of hair, a shade of white,
a slanting slogan. They pull you
off your feet and drag you
over the border with one glance.

Every day, I step over a fault line
that stretches to the earth’s molten core.
I’m one foot in a new world,
one stuck in what is.

BECAUSE WE DID NOT DIE

BY LEO ROSE RODRIGUEZ
               I fold my arms across my lover’s
hard-won breasts, sink
my weight onto one thigh gripped
tight between
hers, our naked skin luminescing
in the dim twilight of our new apartment.

Reach across time, I’ll tell you
we did not die.

SELF-PORTRAIT AS HAPLOPHRYNE MOLLIS

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: BEST READ ON DESKTOP, OR IN LANDSCAPE ON MOBILE.
BY LEO ROSE RODRIGUEZ
Let me sell my bones to you.
Let me be a ghost to my own life, to become yours.
My teeth have hunted for a niche that holds them perfectly,
                   someone who will let me stay 
                   at her side, no
                   become her side as mine atrophies.

You don’t have to feed me,
you don’t even have to look at me. All you have to do
is let me remain, laying down the burden that is my self,
                                let me deliquesce into you. 
                                A flap of scales,
                                a deformed fin, a translucence

glowing in the deep. Ghostly seadevil,
let me become a ghost to my own life,
					     but don’t let me alone.

Leo Rose Rodriguez is a queer, neurodivergent writer and artist based in Minneapolis, on traditional Dakota land. They are the author of chapbooks “Fatherland, Motherland” and “…and this would be Moshiach”. Their writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Earth Review, Rise Up Review, Sinister Wisdom, and elsewhere.