“Little Worm, who left without a glance back and made Mother Worm question if she was ever needed at all.”

“nobody expects me, the little 5’3 chinese girl—to bear chewbaccas bursting out of my chest, have medieval torches for ribs, lava overflowing from my canines • i’m irate for no fill-in-the-bubble reason”

“She likes to show everyone else how much of a good girl I am. How well behaved and responsible.”

“if i had one, i’d tie a red balloon to his shell so i would always/ know where he’s off to next. he’d never tell me why, or why he goes in his water bowl”

“He has happy rabbit sex with other rabbit dads / and the courtyard walls are pink”

“There is one butterfly marked of indecision, that doesn’t seem to want to stay put, yet in all its maneuvers never manages effective departure.”

“while I scribble my name on coastal skylines / of mass-produced cards, if only to trick you / into thinking I am in motion”

“They’re thickest in summer, skulk in the alleys, yawn on front lawns, scavenge restaurant dumpsters like rats. They have long, fleshy tails and hairy, pointed ears. They’re embodied, and also not, like how the word stray is both a noun and a verb.”

“The third snake was unearthly / black // so deep it was hard to see at all / silver and lighter gray scales // catching light like the planets we saw / at Joshua Tree”

“The first rule of Women’s Self Defense class: / Is to highly recommend it to everybody you know.”

“Anxiety doesn’t know what to do / with my face or where to put / my eyes.”

“Whooo, whooo. The whispers of a hundred pigeons take flight inside my body and I feel myself levitate into the air and open up my wings. But just as easily, I sink back down into the yawning mouth of the bed.”

“The old queen / would leave the hive whenever she wanted to // without being followed by a swarm”

We move into the “Hypocenter” in this trio of poems.

“I hunger. I eat. I sleep.

I hunger. I eat. I sleep.”

Be ready to be entranced.

“filling Lowe's bins with soil and zucchini and no blooming brings my painted poogle back from the pound…”

Three is the lucky number of our hearts this V Day. Here’s Monique Quintana’s “Crow Triptych” in three lockets.

“Desire is no foreign thing to immigrants

or queers.”

“…Oh if you insist Mrs. Funnynose
I will sit to tea and mudcakes
with you, soaked to the drawers
in the warm shallows
of this pink, cloved,
round-bellied afternoon.”

“My best friend said the only way she’d find God
is if she got locked up in prison, & she’d pick
Jesus over the rest because he has the most
subscribers.”

“What I knew, and what my old instructor had intuited, was that I needed a change of environment to make progress. You cannot move forward in the writing if you remain still in the world, my professor had written in his email.“

“let’s begin with his disappointment he carries it

onto the platform with my suitcase black strap biting…”

The Sapphic Enchantress Tarot Deck was made with the intention of creating a card system that could resonate with an audience especially consisting of people of marginalised genders and sexual orientations.

“It’s a coincidence you were born
a sea goat, head of horns, fishtail” — Leena Soman Navani, thank you for this majesty.

“Is in correspondence with the representatives of BarkBox: Did Bowie enjoy the lamb jerky?”

“Just for kicks some of your eyes may deceive you” — a stunning visual poem set.

“i was soft once.
i was wet in the sea of a womb, I swam
out into a much bigger ocean”

“We divest from earthly illusion, remove our bones / and make room for the black eyed god. / He demands a sacrifice: this story is older than rain.”

… see my fury reflected in his fear soaked irises as he realizes he is not the predator here.

The thing I want to see // in a dream // is me // singing I am something new // I am something new // I am something new.

The mosquitoes have started unshelling…

a primitive hunger that cannot be / satiated with small brown bits of kibble

I looked up information on cardinals, and when I found out that cardinals didn’t migrate, that you could have generations of the same cardinal family in your yard…

I could say I wasn’t like this, / that love isn’t so pavlovian

tonguing my anger, briefly animal

I am told, where I now stand, serpent is God of water and before time…

The Soft Serve Snake is both playful and has a deeper (possibly disturbing) message about trust and appearance.

The mystery of where sea turtles go for their early years has been solved…

Upon release their flight / stutters with turbulence slight

Someday I’ll hold a tea party for my adopted child, prince(ss), / and talk of historical affairs like the present I am in.

now to those million bugs / you’re still here, still vibrating / in their bellies

In the cave I am a bear living / with a tiger.

What of what the cat, in its curiosity, killed?

As in, a body spared from its owner, jerked/onto a splotchy mattress

an infatuation with the idea of my skin

the last to leave were redwings. / Forests turned into harpsichords.

From the wombs / of true believers, / I came out faithless

who are we, if not the living?