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.
