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Gabrielle Bates, "Conversation with Mary", Judas Goat

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BOB HICOK

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give it up for 2am notesapp poetry ‼️

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“Mythological Philosophical”

I will smoke you

Like the Oracle of Delphi

You want heat

I am Prometheus

I steal fire from the gods

And bring it hard

Like chains and bars

I have desire

Like I was Orpheus

With more will

Than a metal bull

Crafted by Hephaestus

A copper Colchis

Blazing hell

Spitting flames

Splitting skulls

Like Athena

Born from a headache

That only wisdom quells

Are you reasoning well

I am like Oedipus

And the sphinx

And the riddle

I am a paradox

Eldritch

And I answer myself

As man does

But I feel like a demigod

With a mythic cause

Heraclean

Laboring on and on

Fighting lions and hydras

All just to be enough

To find my place

Under the sun

Out of the cave

Done watching shadows

Flickering in front of flames

So like Kronos

I am taking time

As mine

To sow and reap

The mythic and divine

Into my destiny as I write it

Like Apollo and Artemis

Good day

And good night then

—Alice D

May 2, 2025

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My Hits

I take my hits

I get up

I always keep going

I took a hit

I got up

I kept going

I was hit

I stood up

I take another step

My feet drag, I slip

I wasn't hit

I couldn't get up

How could I keep going

It hurts to be hit

I don't get up anymore

Where would I go

Who hits me

Who helps me up

Who can push me on

I only hit myself now

I get up

I keep going

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megan lynne

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Goatsong, Leila Chatti

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Spoiler by Hala Alyan

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you are not there, Aure Vives

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slate dyed blue

You have been on this planet for 450 million years, aloft in the blue sea sky like wind chimes, bodies of rough gray scales, mouths agape into pink chasms, ringlets of ivory teeth sharp against the open water.

We have spent all time tracing history back — Ours and yours— on your bones and never once thought to ask you:

What have you seen with your inky eyes? Where have you been in these wine-dark seas?

There are millions upon millions of years between us. You hang eons of wisdom over our heads like an anglerfish’s esca. King Fish, you of countless lifetimes, witness of beginnings and ends, you’ve triumphed survival, commandeered evolution, and still:

Humility becomes you. Never once have you bragged, never once have you stalled the glide of your mighty fins, never once have you halted your pursuit of life, or freedom, or even your next meal.

You have never had to watch the last of your kin fade into distant memories made of silt.

Until: Shark fin soup, overfishing, culling, pollution, Jaws, mass hysteria. Undoing the threads of DNA, evaporating species like mist, harpooning you into extinction for the first time.

You shouldn’t ever forgive us for what we’ve done to you. Even in water we force you to drown. Time is running out, sand sliding through our fingers, time's wheel spinning, churning water into sargassum and brine.

I’m sorry for each year we’ve drained: We will apologize for the next 450 million.

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Playing House

7. I don’t remember everything. My mother moved out of the white house, and I am young and angry and Wednesdays become my favorite day of the week. I don't remember.

6. My father lets me run ahead as we walk to the mailbox. I am making Buzz Lightyear fly, my brother cradles Woody. My father holds my brother's hand. I don’t let him hold mine. He tells me not to go into the street, but I run on the curb.

5. I would pop the feet off my Bratz dolls and lose them. I would lose the rubber Disney Princess shows of my Polly Pockets. My parents had me disassemble my toys into losses of Keep or Donate. I don’t understand, and my father gets mad when I say I don’t want to lose my toys.

4. I didn’t cry once. I don't remember why.

3. Sometimes I wish it could have gone differently. Would I have been different if I took my father’s side? Would I have treated my brother better than I had? I ask, and my mother only tells me they just didn’t love each other anymore.

2. Mom’s new apartment is small and my brother and I share a bunk bed. I sleep on top. The first night I roll off the mattress and fall hard. My mother installs a guard rail, but I don’t feel safe. I don’t like how the ceiling looks. It makes me mad.

1. I was 7 years old and my brother was 3, the year was 2009, my parents lived in separate houses, and it was spring— An otherwise good, normal year.

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Calypso

She's a wise one. Men have acted the same way for centuries, and she's been privy to their behavior for even longer. The seafarers, the merchants, the fuckboys, the shepherds, the hook-ups, the vintners, the politicians, the booty calls, the "heroes"… She knows the habits of each prick: Carnal desire amuck with talk of wealth or ego or other women she doesn't care to know the name of. He doesn’t know that she knows how to work him. Winged eyeliner, plume of down, Chanel perfume, feathered talons, purring painted lips singing the lyrics to Lovers Rock, coily pubes between soft sinewy thighs, something something “Anthemoessa is my crib”, letting him tell pretend stories about himself and oo-ing and ah-ing at all the right beats. (Forget Odysseus— His phone call home to “Penelope”. The desperate and resourceful man— a missed body.) But he’s hooked, snagged, caught on her snatch of lies. The sea line consumes him like cotton candy dissolves in water: A full-body experience, a warm bed. He is lost in her ocean eyes. The water takes his legs, his groin, his belly, his chest and when the wet laps at his lips, she kisses his eyelids closed. Silky smooth shudders, the angel of small death. He needs me, She thinks. And then she dips below the waves, blowing bubbles and popping them, pulling him, tugging him, down into the depths too.

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The Trans Agenda is to Keep My F*cking Friends Alive — sol rios

published as part of the Citizen Trans* {Project} by New Words Press

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An old favorite, “Late Melt” by Melissa Broder

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Jane Hirshfield, "I Asked to Be Ash, to Be Green.", The Asking: New and Selected Poems

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Poem 50 ("I lost my way, I forgot …"), Leonard Cohen