– do my laundry & pretend to fold it
– heave a flannel over my broad shoulders
– burn incense from japan (or for japan)
– sit under a leaky air conditioner
– sweep my bathroom free of spider corpses
– gnaw an apple, ambrosial & infinite
– spit out soil from underneath my tongue
– wait for Christmas, thanksgiving, next october, a decade
– heave out tears heavy like oranges rolling
– eat up every word about sunlight
– tongue out a strange language, medieval and womanly
– tell my mother about my bitter tongue
– hide from migrating monarchs
– party with dark strangers
– sneeze with abandon
– lick up water frozen & gathered on live wires
– wrangle medusa’s head back and tip cider down
– ask what is art? what is a braid? what is whole?
– dress like the whore of Babylon
– make maya angelou proud
– keep going, going, gone fishing for a reason to breathe
– breathe breath of deep pine forest
– dream of elaine & monsters & some child’s toys
– hoist a picket sign, embarrassed
– grieve the death of not my father
– listen to 4 pm robins, scattering, scatting
– live like a furious and consecrated weasel
– stick my hand up the armpit of dusty books
– reduce sugar down to coat my mad woman-ness
– kill off the author of seasoned journals
– leave my scarf at my sister’s house
– speak to the sky about wild ferns
– scream at gathered starlings
– write about the char on my mother’s naan
– stand on the corner & relearn traffic lights
– leave it all whirring, warm, til next heron’s call

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Lily Kesten is a senior at Asbury University looking forward to double-fisting two diplomas at graduation in English & Media Communications in May of 2023. She has progressed from simply a contributor to her campus litmag (The Asbury Review) to the publicist to the poetry editor to now, finally, the Editor-in-Chief. Lily never dots her ‘i’s in her handwriting, almost always orders a blackberry latte from the Hiccup Café & wishes she could return to the innocent age where The Magic Tree House Series was the pinnacle of fiction as she knew it.  

Social media: @lilykes10