by Taylor Gregory
- A clavicle broken outside a bar in Detroit
1983 feels like a fever dream.
You memorize an unpaid tab,
an empty glass, fingers running
across the curve of your breast.
Under a neon glare, you listen
to the rasp of heavy breath,
watch the bloom of purple skin.
You still hear the snap of bone
when you drink bourbon;
you still hide the scar
from your father at Christmas.
- Fingers reaching for the last Marlboro Red
When it’s cold and you feel an
unidentified ache in your chest,
you have learned to light it on fire.
You find warmth in the slender
yellow body, some comfort
in wisps you leave in the dark.
Maybe it’s that you see
your reflection in the embers;
maybe you feel
a sick kind of pleasure
when you snuff
them out.
- Artery, capillary, vein; blueish-green blood
Your skin is like a paper-lantern:
in certain lights, you appear
as a watered-down picture of yourself —
the colors faded,
lines dissolved,
the edge of where you begin
and end never drawn.
You have found yourself thinning,
stretched like the skin on
your wrists. Underneath,
your veins run blueish green,
mapping out the rhythms of your heart.
Only in this desperation
can you recognize the pulsing,
know your own blood,
return to your origin.
- Puckered lips, severed tongue
You came into this world breathless,
blue-faced, but made your misery
in the quiet. Here you learned
your mouth was not made for speaking.
But there is something strange
about your silence, a pucker
in your lips when you form
syllables you can’t get out.
There is something
unnerving about your words —
the ones that remained unsaid then,
that still simmer in the
back of your throat now.
- A piece of flint, struck to flame
In between vision and reality,
your face reflects
in a different mirror.
Your hands have calloused
and your bones do not rattle.
You have learned how deep
your teeth can cut,
pulling past layers of tissue,
tendons, deep-rooted secrets.
By now, you have heard gravel
in your voice, known the flint
you carry in your fingertips.
Here, you cast a flame,
throw it to the wind,
watch it sizzle and smoke
in the dark.
Taylor Gregory (she/her) is an MA student at Oklahoma State University. Taylor studies 20th-century British literature, Modernism, and contemporary poetry. Her current research concerns religious transformation in Modernist poetry, specifically the works of T.S. Eliot.