Nick Fancher, Untitled
A Woman Is Everyone
Phyllis Koehler
A woman is everyone
who cannot
forget that she
has a body
with the carelessness
of a child ritually sacrificing
a Tamagotchi or a
first-born son I drape
myself on his bed
used tissue paper with
soft stains crumpled
undoing implications
of form the carving
knife “easy-access
longing” in my ass
that evening I bite
into a blanket wiping
my face in the
linen and feeding on
the woodchip-wallpaper’s
shadow-scars my skin heavy or
the shroud around a ghost
thus drooling I somewhat
whisper louder than
most in due course
(It must have been time
or maybe it was a
bit of smudged mascara on
a clockface) I soap the
folds the thin-lipped
whispering wound: “I
wish grief would label
itself I want
to draw the horoscope
of its expiry date
each star a gap
bruise-glazed and
bone-shattered” contorted
like a question mark
or like a Joan who
lost her Arc or like an un-
digested fibre in the
vomit of my sky-sick
angels I swim
with clumsy breast-
strokes (breast-tips tender
from HRT) through the abc
of my sword spelling
out how every
song fades into breathing
how the spit on someone’s
lips generally tastes like “farewell.”
I’ll always remember my blood in pastel.
Phyllis Koehler
A woman is everyone
who cannot
forget that she
has a body
with the carelessness
of a child ritually sacrificing
a Tamagotchi or a
first-born son I drape
myself on his bed
used tissue paper with
soft stains crumpled
undoing implications
of form the carving
knife “easy-access
longing” in my ass
that evening I bite
into a blanket wiping
my face in the
linen and feeding on
the woodchip-wallpaper’s
shadow-scars my skin heavy or
the shroud around a ghost
thus drooling I somewhat
whisper louder than
most in due course
(It must have been time
or maybe it was a
bit of smudged mascara on
a clockface) I soap the
folds the thin-lipped
whispering wound: “I
wish grief would label
itself I want
to draw the horoscope
of its expiry date
each star a gap
bruise-glazed and
bone-shattered” contorted
like a question mark
or like a Joan who
lost her Arc or like an un-
digested fibre in the
vomit of my sky-sick
angels I swim
with clumsy breast-
strokes (breast-tips tender
from HRT) through the abc
of my sword spelling
out how every
song fades into breathing
how the spit on someone’s
lips generally tastes like “farewell.”
I’ll always remember my blood in pastel.