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19.
By Katey Funderburgh.
“Here she was: on her floor with streetlights / slipping through her blinds, ribboning across violet skin.“
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knife in the water by Agata Żychlińska.
after Safia Ehlillo
I swear to god I’m trying to let it be. But she
lives here, scabkneed
on all fours in my kitchen, as if I’d also leave her
pulling up floorboards
with her milkteeth, crumbs on her cheeks, blinking from beneath
me. And how hard it is to be gentle
about saying “get up”. And did you love them?
Her spine ribboned when touched. She’s peering over my shoulder– the thousandth poem for
a teenaged body newly womaned
or the trillionth if you count
all the ones not for her.
Each one of them had touched
with parted lips her every bony disk.
Their dishes washed and dried. Clean sheets. Their hands
always so much softer than she thought they’d be
when they moved from her mouth to her temple.
They never hurt the unwilling. Even as she asks, I won’t leave
out the mattress drug beneath
the window on the night
she goes home alone
Here she was: on her floor with streetlights
slipping through her blinds, ribboning across violet skin. See?
I’m trying to let her be, but yes. Yes you did.
Please, child. Please get up.
The Blood Pudding – June 26, 2024
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Katey Funderburgh is an emerging queer poet from Colorado. She is a current MFA Poetry student at George Mason University, where she is also the co-coordinator of phoebe journal’s Incarcerated Writers Project. Some of her other work has appeared in Josephine Quarterly, One Art, and samfiftyfour. When Katey isn’t toiling over poems, she’s laying in the sun with her cat, Thistle.
Artwork: Agata Żychlińska is an exciting Polish painter who has exhibited her work in Germany, Poland, India and the UK. Employing vivid colours and sharp lines, she seeks to collect trivial situations that occur in everyday life and transform them into something a little surprising or extraordinary. You can find more about her here.