Final Poems

#finalpoems / [?]

ONE WEEK LEFT

See,

Feel,

Listen,
Touch, be-

Live. Beware,
Behold all
That comes, be-

Seech, be free in ways
That past decades did
Not allow you. Taste
The air when the sun
Rises, spread your arms…

SIX DAYS LEFT

Think,

Dream,

Search and
You’ll find

A spaceship
By your side.
Look at her,

Drink her, relish her,
Tell her you hope to
Find her waiting for
You at heaven’s gate.
Then watch the sun rise.

FIVE DAYS LEFT

Smile,

Laugh,

Allow
Your heart

To be glad.
Allay your
Children’s fears.

Play in dirt with them,
Ask them about their
Dreams and hopes and if
They had a way to
Save the world; They will!

FOUR DAYS

Now,

Cry.

Let your
Anguish

Become at
One with death.
Make a list

Of the things you must
Do if you had an
Extra day or week.
You are allowed to
Look for real spaceships!

THREE DAYS

Sleep!

Wake,

And sleep
Again.

The past four
Days are gone.
Look ahead.

Two Days

Do

All

Again
In one.

D-day

Die!

Ahmad Holderness is a poet, aspiring writer, and a medical doctor. His poems and haikus have appeared in different journals. He believes poetry can be used as a medication and hope his collections can be bought at a drugstore in the future. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria where he enjoys the aromatherapy of family life.

#finalpoems / [?]

“Creating Cataclysm: Buarquean Construct”

I

He ignored his soul like it would last.
He cultivated his mind like it was his last,
And his body like it was weak,
And paced his room like he was meek.

He shuttered his windows like he was entombed.
He barricaded the street like he was doomed.
Door to door with insistent fervor,
Bleary-eyed about town with triumphant clamor.

He alerted the state like it was destiny.
He fled the coast seeking shelter.
He tumbled into waves like a deity.
When the Earth stopped, he imploded like a whirlpool.

He hurtled from the Earth like a tumbleweed,
And burned through the solar system like kindling,
And disintegrated through the galaxy like a dandelion,
And fluttered through the supercluster like a feather,
And vanished at the edge of the multiverse like he was gossamer.

II

He ignored his soul like it was his last.
He cultivated his mind like it was his last,
And his body like it was redundant,
And paced his room like he was a fervor.

He shuttered his windows like it was shelter.
He barricaded the street like he was a dandelion.
Door to door with insistent destiny,
Bleary-eyed about town with triumphant gossamer.

He alerted the state like it was doomed.
He fled the coast seeking clemency.
He tumbled into waves like a whirlpool.
When the Earth stopped, he imploded like a tumbleweed.

He hurtled from the Earth like a feather.
He burned through the solar system like a deity.
He disintegrated through the galaxy like he was entombed.
He fluttered through the supercluster like he was meek,
And vanished at the edge of the multiverse like he was weak.

III

He ignored his soul like it was kindling.
He cultivated his mind like it was a deity.
He barricaded the street like he was a tumbleweed.
He alerted the state like it was a dandelion,
And disintegrated through the galaxy like he was gossamer,
And fluttered through the supercluster like he was doomed,
And vanished at the edge of the multiverse like it was destiny.

IV

For this smog-ridden air; for this endless despair;
For this dank lair; for the demon not there;
For this thin hair; for this lack of care;
God bless me.

For your damned heir; for his empty chair;
For an answered prayer; for this rotten pear;
For this mended tear; for a divided pair;
God bless me.

For all I accidentally impair; for all you repair;
For a face so fair; for all you ensnare;
For a longing stare; for a passing scare;
God bless me.

Bernardo Villela has a BFA in Film from LIU Post. His first short film Suffer the Little Children, won four awards at 13 festivals worldwide. He has since branched out directing and editing short films, editing a feature, writing and directing a TV commercial; and writing and directing for theater. He’s most recently turned to fiction publishing a novella and three short story collections. You can read more about these various pursuits at www.miller-villela.com.

#finalpoems / [?]

All we have is this moment

It all has to end
I suppose I should teach you that
We are not eternal

Like the spring blossoms
Cherry petals white and pink
Rain in flittering descent
Wind-charted; how, where, when
They will fall

It all has to end
Let that be your reason for living
We are not eternal

Our campfire burning down
Even now the embers glowing
Red outline, opaque core
The s’mores gooey overflowing
Sweetness of this moment

It all has to end, so
Love impermanence’s caress
Let go of fear, cinder that would char
Experience, live knowing
We are not eternal.

Michael DeMaranville loves poetry and is constantly looking for inspiration. He has taught English in Korea, Vietnam, Russia, and currently lives and teaches in China.

#finalpoems / [?]

Dear Crestfallen Leaf,
I love your poetry beyond belief
Your words exude love, comfort, sweet relief
For this young old soul now battling disease
Awaiting Mother Mary’s soft whisper, “Let It Be”
Bringing a whole new meaning to carpe diem, seize.

Running down the dream, only to find
Karma’s a trip, with no travel agent in mind
And this, my desperate attempt to answer you in kind.
Maybe just one last trip, for old times’ sake
Niagara, Superior, Victoria Lake
“But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over
Nor have I the wings to fly.”

Still might I fashion, from my imagination,
Destinations just over that horizon.
Chocolate on your pillow, a room with a view
Through my mind’s eye
I glimpse Scarborough, Innisfree, Xanadu.

“Take the wave now and know that you’re free.
Turn your back on the land, face the sea.
And in due time, I will forge
A bridge over troubled water
To lead you back home.”
Full circle on this accidental poem.

“È la fede che
Hai acceso in noi
Sento che ci salverà.”

Nita Jain is a a 25-year-old biochemist from Lilburn, Georgia. Jain enjoys hiking, watching documentaries, playing piano, and trivia. Jain’s role models include Rosalind Franklin, Rachel Carson, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and Oliver Sacks.

#finalpoems / [?]

let me tell you about a moment i remember
in a life where they are the cheapest currency
devalued, and
not recognized at most major
airport money exchange counters

i remember a pause we co-wrote.

you were cutting garlic
you always did it better than me
i was stirring tomatoes until the bitterness would leave them

when our moment came
a pause leached of the sharp taste of half-cooked tomatoes

we stood inside each others’ overlapping arcs of energy
without looking behind me to where you stood
holding my existence with such sweet lack of effort
us wrapped in each other easy as pie
interlaced fingers of dough touching in the middle yet
open to sunlight, receptive to moisture

knowing that to turn to you would be like coming home
but staying where i was
because i knew you wouldn’t leave

that i wouldn’t find myself alone in a hot kitchen
stirring former tomatoes, now stripped of their skin
and without the soft embrace of garlic to enhance them

no, i knew you’d still be there
coming up behind me, at any minute to pass over
those small white bits
your hands fragrant
you, holding me still,

Ilse is an uncertain, sensitive English teacher who has lived and taught in Uganda, Laos, and soon China.

#finalpoems / [?]

At The End Of It All

Colossal angled fingers,
Stretching to the sky,
Extending, uncurling like spiders legs,
Wide and red.

Poetry allows S.Peters to describe sensations that are ephemeral, abstract and poignant. Her #finalpoem was written at 30,000ft in a state of painful ecstasy, as she flew to America alone to begin a new life there. The poem describes both a fleeting moment of intense joy as well as a sensation of transcendental movement, fear and an almost holy, alien sense of purpose. “My very being was flying through the sky and I felt as if my whole body was stretching, striving for something. I am continuously living in that moment and this poem represents that.”

#finalpoems / [?]

Womyn is Phoenix. Is God.

And finally
the entire thing is gone,
swallowed as the earth licks itself aflame

sun,
an unapologetic master heads home

moon,
mistress of the night beckons sweetly in the belly of darkness.

In the beginning man slept
as the beauty of womyn was fashioned, and

I can imagine the Creator speechless while
molding flesh into curves,
lips into resistance,
hair a lasso of truth,
eyes the very embodiment of Styx,
thighs the gates to forever, now and then.

I can imagine the angels gathered,
nodding,
reverent,
wings shivering in awe at the image of God—

perfect He created them, and
when the jaws of this foundation bite shut
only She can create this life, fashion
like Him in Her image as the man sleeps—

spent like the sun.

Gervanna Stephens is a girl from a small Caribbean island with congenital amputation. She is a poet, educator, and a proud Slytherin. Gervanna has had poems published in several print and online magazines, including Whirlwind Magazine, 12 Point Collective, Spillwords and Anti-Heroin Chic. She hates public speaking, has two sisters who are way better writers than her and thinks unicorns laugh at us when we say they aren’t real.

#finalpoems / [?]

Our Daily Becoming
after Adam Clay

Like the same Mayagüez
rock my grandfather moves
from one side of his house
to the other, it should be easier

to distinguish inhales between
exhales, the hands that rebuild
his mother’s house, quenepas
spawning overnight life in green.

In these moments of living,
proof of flesh serves as a halo,
the shape of the cheapest bean
that feeds our daily becoming.

It should be easier to define
one’s path to the winning
lottery ticket, but dreams at
his feet only reflect the chasing

of beads around the rosary.
Eventually, he stops running
even if he misses it. O, how it
felt like flying he says. How he

now flaps his fingers filled with
nourishing fruit while respecting
the movement of rocks. Despite
that he says, finalmente, los

pichones le robarán el aire,
he will continue to respect
grass in his yard as the blades
always reach towards the sun.

Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto-Vegan educator, writer, artist, and community organizer from Newark, New Jersey. He is the recipient of the SLICE Magazine’s 2017 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets and a finalist for the Arcturus Poetry Prize by the Chicago Review of Books. Dimitri is a candidate in the Rutgers- Newark MFA program and his poetry is published or forthcoming in Acentos Review, Anomaly, Hawai’i Review, Kweli, and others.

#finalpoems / [?]

Can I Get More Time? No, Okay Then.

A smile still touches the brim of my lips
I travel to my favorite places

Legs carry me to the fields
Fingers kissing the tall grass
Inhaling the crisp clean air
Bare feet sinking in the churned dirt
Finding the gravel
The south, how it hugs me

Walking to the underbelly
Where graffiti splatters cement
The abandoned buildings whisper
Telling stories of the people that lived there
Brick and green peeking through cracks
The city, how it toughens me

Through the cemetery and the church
To all of my favorite restaurants
Pressing cheek to stages
Running palm against mic
London, how it tested me

Climbing the hills
Lungs breathing in faith
At the peak hands extend to touch the clouds
It is then that tears cascade to the trembling smile
The beauty and pain potent
Sharp, like avoidance
Tennessee, Baltimore, St. Louis how they grew me

Places are easy
People,
Love swells in the heart
Dipping body one last time into the water
Caught in the current
Floating as the sky cracks open with trumpet

My taxi home is here
A smile still plays on still water
Purpose fulfilled, I love you

Sahara Sista S.O.L.S is a author, poet, actor, and teaching artist with a BFA in Communication: Theatre Studies and a specialization in Art Therapy. She was born in Knoxville, TN, raised there and in Baltimore, MD though she currently lives in St. Louis, MO. She was member of the nationally ranked St. Louis poetry slam team for three consecutive years and placed in the top 20 of Woman of the World Poetry Slam 2017. Currently she is a librarian at St. Louis Public Library.

#finalpoems / [?]

“Nothing’s the same low”

Other-sides of mountains
and empty
puddle valleys
rend cloud tides
apart in lace shard
summits,
wine-darked and airy crucible
     .     we stagger and throw our petrified agony
over obelisk anxiety, winter-picked
firefly-minds scattered across uninterrupted glacier-fields
monochrome razed
descents last cinder-colored
light stroke and secure flat spaces
Gore-Tex and Arc’teryx and
heavy sleep
wind purged apostates always coming back,
the note on the fridge says “the emptiness of the planet
    .     can’t be escaped behind any number of walls”

Nathan Caines is a student and mountain guide in the western United States.
His work has been featured in the 34th Parallel, the Bitchin’ Kitsch and Maudlin House.

#finalpoems / [?]

CLOSING BEAT

Tango two,
when two are dying
tangling you, these lives
at our toes. We lose a foot,
we’re gaining feet, an inch,
a closing beat
steps out of reach.

Times we moved when
we should have taken root.
Now repeat in reverse time.

We would miss this beat. Lost
time, last measures.

You always hated other’s beats.
We always were off.
But so was he, your first conductor.

There: we three were in sync.
Then our sway broke the moment
the last beat ceased.

Fordy Shoor studied at Sarah Lawrence College before graduating from UC Berkeley. He is a graduate student at CSU East Bay, where he served as an associate editor for Arroyo Literary Review and works in the College Link Program. His writing has been featured in Atom Magazine, CLAM, Occam’s Razor, Shotgun Honey, and the East Bay Review.

#finalpoems / [?]

Be it enacted by the Legislature of Alabama, That any person wandering or strolling about in idleness, who is able to work, and has no property to support him; or any person leading an idle, immoral, profligate life, having no property to support him, and who is able to work and does not work; or any person able to work, having no property to support him, and who has no visible or known means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood: (the term ‘visible and known means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood’ above used shall be construed to mean reasonable, continuous employment, at some lawful occupation, for reason able compensation, or a fixed and regular income from property or other investment, which income is sufficient for the support and maintenance of such vagrant); or any person having a fixed abode, who has no property to support him, and who lives by stealing, trading or bartering stolen property; or any person who is a common drunkard, or a professional gambler, living in idleness; or any able bodied person who is found begging for a living, or who quits his house and leaves his wife and children without means of substance; or any person who is able to work, and who does not work but hires out his minor children and lives upon their wages; or any person over sixteen and under twenty-one years of age, able to work and who does not work, and has no property to support him and has not some known or visible means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood, and whose parents are unable to support him, and who is not in attendance upon some educational institute; or any person who is a prostitute or a keeper of a house of prostitution and who has no honest employment whereby to maintain herself, is hereby declared to be a vagrant and must on conviction be fined not more than five hundred ($500.00) dollars and may also be imprisoned in the county jail or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not more than six months. Provided, that it shall be a sufficient defense to the charge of vagrancy under any of the provisions of this act that the defendant has made bona fide efforts to obtain employment at reasonable prices for his labor, and has failed to obtain the same. The provisions of this act shall not apply to persons who are idle under strike orders or lockouts.¹

I always keep my new work ID above my state
ID in my wallet because my family has been work

in this state longer than we’ve been citizens
in this state. My body was work, was wealth; what is

my body doing if it isn’t breaking
earth or breaking itself for the state? What is my body doing outside

of a school or inside
of a parked car or passing

time in a park? If my body is not on
the clock, then my body is idle,

and idle hands are the devil,
and the devil must be chained

and sentenced to a lake of fire.
And the fire can be United

Steel. The fire can be Red
Mountain ore. The fire can be a River

Falls lumber camp. The fire can be a Belle
Ellen slope. But the fire always comes

after the chain. Black bodies can’t be free
in Alabama because black bodies

were never free in Alabama. Somebody has to pay
for me, and my new work ID says I can pay. And I’m happy to

say that I can pay for my mother
when she orders pizza on Thanksgiving eve.

The new job lets me pay. I interviewed for the job
on a Thursday, the fourth day of the work week.

Four is my lucky number.
I was born on the fourth

of the month, and I’m the fourth kid when god
knows my parents didn’t need a fourth kid. But

I interviewed for the new job on a Thursday
because Thursday was always my mother’s

day off, the day she didn’t belong to J.C. Penney.
She was with me, and we had outings,

and I didn’t have to wake up early to work the coal
out of my eye and get ready to go

to grandma’s house. I was free
to sit in the front seat of the Chevy Celebrity

and ask my mom dumb kid questions
like if she ever dreamed

of being anything when she grew up.
And, really, this new job, this new ID, and this

poem won’t stop one siren
or sentencing guideline. It’s all about me

buying my independence back from an Alabama
that swore I could afford to live

a free life if I was willing to
sweat enough. It’s all about me still trying

to pay off the debt I took on
to buy into that lie.

¹ Text taken from 1903 Alabama Vagrancy Law

Jason McCall holds an MFA from the University of Miami. His collections include Two-Face God; Dear Hero, (winner of the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize); Silver; I Can Explain; and Mother, Less Child (co-winner of the 2013 Paper Nautilus Vella Chapbook Prize). He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He is an Alabama native, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama.

#finalpoems / [?]

In the event that the cookout is cancelled

& so I tear me
from my own selfish grief;
soothe my anxiety into a poem
caulking my reassurance line by line.

I poem the way a     man
staring at a mountain’s horizon
from the base of his obsession
makes a keepsake of every foothold.

I poem the lung’s osmosis,
Abandoning my breath’s
.  dictation
. to the wind

I poem memories
of my baby brother at infancy,
place his quickening upturnt brow
onto earth’s decaying orbit
& monitor his reflected laugh in the moon’s glare.

I poem my mom into everything
that gives my pen pulse,
& she writes herself
a nurturing constant
into the meter of my life.

My sister poems herself
as confidant to whom
the apocalypse shivers at;
our conjoined laugh is stitched
at the nervous system, disorienting
the melancholy in each stanza.

I poem my fathers,
chronicle their insistence
in eroding flint from my forehead
through their wellsprings of wisdom.
Pen the jagged softening into fluidity.

I poem the Messiah,
testify of each day’s taste,
swoon at the sugar
& sift, through the bitter, acidity
of meals mistakenly consumed.

I poem my eroding flesh,
dismissing the tendered gall
& repent, sacrificing the days
not consumed with love’s burning bush.

I poem cousins
in trips to the convenience store
and Pepsi’s
bought with my aunt’s money.

I poem Chicago
& all the days spent separate
from family I don’t see enough.

But I poem the reunions
especially snug into the paper,
stuffing the margins
with the branches in the family tree
until the leaves tug
tighter at my roots.

& so I poem, my family first
& foremost, because if it ends
they were all that was left
for me.

& in the event
the screen fades to black
before the film finishes

I braid the BBQ scent
into the credits without charring flesh,
I stencil the sway of hips
massaging stiffness from the air
all along the cardboard cover

& in this ending scene
we all outlive the bullet
or the cancer,
or the divorce

& the only moral
is shared laughs,
the game of spades,
or the well-licked spoon wet with cake batter

the coffin saved for all my pretense.

In this renege of an apocalypse
bury me in creation’s breath
as it caresses the mountain peak
and let the Creator breathe again

Terrance Brown: 23 by way of St. Louis Missouri, previously published in Bellerive’s Sonder, wusgoodblack.com, issue 3 of Bad Jacket, poetrypotion.com & the site BrooklynButtah.com. A pacifist deciphering the mathematics of a war time society. Bred from scribbles on the tabletops in your local schoolery.

#finalpoems / [?]

if it ends tomorrow, i die the luckiest person who ever lived

i own a body that is mine
and when i breathe
each unguaranteed piece of air,
i breathe every lung
that came before me

i live with a human
i love voraciously,
wake to her hot face
and kiss her like a dog
laps its silver water bowl

in the classroom,
i teach my throat to clamping,
parade in rampant gesticulation;
when i am angry,
my wrath’s a monarch,
when i’m happy,
the light from my teeth
burns little holes
in their foreheads

nights, i slit my eyes open
and words spill black ink
on a computer screen;
sometimes i hate the words
and sometimes
they’re fatty and excellent
as prime rib,
but i always have them

i eat good meals, two-a-day,
gathered from a supermarket;
i haven’t wanted in years

i live in a warm place,
drink good beer,
make coffee so strong
it should be illegal,
when i cry i know a storm’s
passing through me,
when it storms i know
the mud will smell
of frog-catching season

who could say anyone’s
ever had more?
i go to sleep
in night’s star-fat silence.

Brendan Walsh has lived and taught in South Korea, Laos, and South Florida. His work appears in Glass Poetry, Indianapolis Review, Wisconsin Review, Mudfish, Lines + Stars, and other journals. He is the author of Make Anything Whole (Five Oaks Press), Go (Aldrich Press) and Buddha vs. Bonobo (Sutra Press). He’s online at www.brendanwalshpoetry.com.

#finalpoems / [?]

Summer Storm

The air is thick with angry heat.

A clap of thunder shakes my body into a frenzied madness.

I am sliced by a thin silver blade of lightning.

I stretch out my arms.

The sky opens.

The lighting slices through me.

Slash after slash,
Piercing my flesh.

Red raindrops collect on my skin
until puddles of bright red collect at my feet.

The rain slows.

The sky is stitched by a layer of humidity.

The sun carves a path through the clouds,

burning the raw flesh of each lightning strike
etched onto my skin.

The air is still thick.

It is not angry

But another storm will come.

April Bandy-Taylor holds a MA degree in Counseling and an MEd in Physical Education/Exercise Science. Her greatest passions include poetry, Broadway musicals, and animal rights. Her writing has been featured on CharlestonPoets.com. She currently resides in Charleston, SC with her wife, 3 rescue dogs and one rowdy chinchilla.

#finalpoems / [?]

The Defeat Of Melancholia

This beach, the end of everything,
here, as Melancholia and Earth collide.
Your doomed body a new world;
all things possible now,

now, time truly nothing—
if seconds only remain
why measure them so short?
if soon we cease, what use
in cursing cessation?

No space for half voices,
time and terra firma break
like ocean; we cry out
a final big bang, molecules
in fusion, an ecstatic combustion.

Raging within our skins,
shuddering with the ground, with life,
a great high humming
we’ve found, finally,
at the end of age.

The wave approaches.
Light divides before us.
You hold it and me,
pieces of the same, all;
and then
all break apart, your heart generous
unto the last,
too ferocious
for even the cosmos to devour.

Aaron Glover is the Co-Executive Director of The Writer’s Garret, a nonprofit literary organization in Dallas, TX. His first chapbook Bio Logic (INF Press) was published in 2017. His works appear in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Illya’s Honey, the Red River Review, Chicon Street Poets, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in acting from the University of Houston, and was on faculty in the Department of Performance Studies at Texas A&M University.

#finalpoems / [?]

SOMETHING LIKE THIS

If you were to bury your gaze
deep in the streets of my eyes,
you will see an entire episode
of a stench calamity.
.
Like photographs
of a fatherless boy
who ties the sun
around his neck
while searching the smell
of his murdered father
on his mother’s crinkled skin.
.
See,
there is a way
fire burns in my body.
Sometimes I blend water and dust
before shoving them down my throat,
for they hold
shadows of my brothers
who went and never came back
to tell tales of how the city glitters
when the rich sit on the laps
of the poor.
.
Something like this,
is what happens in my village
when a girl is forced to build
a shrine between her legs.
‘Cause her body
is said to be a temple
if she perches on its flesh;
the weight of men
who wander around with bags of lust.
.
Something like this,
is what swallowed mother
before she turned
into a dirge
I pierced on my right ear.
‘Cause every melody grasped,
Is sign of hope－
The sun will one day
rise in my village.

Chanda Chongo is a 20-year-old writer and poet hailing from Zambia’s tourist capital Livingstone, in the central part of Africa.
Some of his works have appeared on Youth Shades magazine, Lunaris Review, FunDza and other social media platforms. His recently started out a blog, and you can see more of his works on afrocabin.wordpress.com

#finalpoems / [?]

For women whose bodies are bags of grief

And when he promised to be your shelter
You forgot that a basin is no home for the
Depth of an ocean.

And when you find a woman
Whose body is a bag of grief
Sit her down and show her
how you carry your scars
Like beautiful birthmarks
And then tell her
How the sun walks out
Of the day without apology.
Tell her how love heals itself.
And in her core, she is love
Breathing healing.

Ogunkoya Samuel is a physiotherapy student in Nigeria. His poems have been published in Kalahari Review, AfricanWriter and Best New African poets anthology 2017.

#finalpoems / [?]

Science Fiction

the artists refused the commission/ love me/ they needed space/ the artists/ love me/ the safe word/ the soldiers/ commissioned/ to throw a huge/ parade/ the artists closed their eyes/ it was a sign/ the town was quiet/ in an alternate universe/ they are cutting off the hair of the dead/ lithe and hushed/ isn’t it romantic/ love me/ when something happens/ proselytize/ lady fingers/ liberty they love/ me on demolition day/ the artists were forecasting the trajectories/ of airplanes and buses prepared to crash/ everyone wants answers/ the soldiers split stems with spit/ find me underneath/ a smooth mahogany desk/ eating lead/ an act of contrition/ etched into the back of everyone’s neck/ it is hard to love yourself

Julianne Neely is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship and was awarded the 2017 John Logan Poetry Prize. Her writing has been published in The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Hobart, LEVELER, Pacifica Literary Review, New Orleans Review, and more. Her chapbook ‘The Body Beside Herself’ is forthcoming from Slope Editions in February 2018.

#finalpoems / [?]

It is in my nature to want things I cannot have, to have things I do not want.

Who were you before you were memories steeping in cortical networks begging not to be fed?

In this poem,
my body is not an apology.
In this poem,
I’m my saving grace.
In this poem,
I am done pouring myself out,
by which I mean:
I am pouring myself in.

Frances Ann is a 21-year-old poet who can be found @flils on Instagram.