This month we offer a bee chorus, the last licks of blue evening.
Next month we
rest
Submission guidelines can be found here.
Understanding the Kardashians is understanding America
In conversation with mj corey
“What happens when a person becomes a symbol? Is it inherently exploited? Is it corporatized? Do we kill what’s radical about revolutionary leaders when we do this, especially in the context of today, when everything is saturated by capitalism? Is Kim Kardashian just skipping to the end game, the fate that befalls everybody, while she just chooses to own it? I don’t know. But Kim will be remembered as the token woman at the table of American global symbols, amid Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson and Jeff Bezos. The Kim Kardashian ass is like the McDonald’s Ms Or the Mickey Mouse ears.”
ALTERNATE NAMES FOR MY GENDER
after Danez Smith
- snarling chainsaw
- bee chorus
- honeysuckle
- mayhem of hair
- screen door slammed shut
- summer musk
- razed field
- peeling paint
- the field behind my house
- turning grainy at dusk
- a drop of sweat
- pearling skin
- knees raw with silt
- toolshed burning
- catch of breath
- palm petaled open
- hard to conjure
- fridgehum
- fractured cement
- fog-smeared sky
- falling from another fence
- blackberry-stained hands
- a steady throb
Despy Boutris’s work has been published in Copper Nickel, Guernica, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles.
quebec again
last licks of blue evening, screech of time fast away, I
craft an itinerary without you in mind:
no city is our city any more. one tally mark on the door; decades will follow.
the radio tells me time is
a holy ghost but
like the rest of the trinity I don’t pray to it at all any more
there is nothing and everything I’m impatient for
why do we talk about the dying of the light
like if we grieve with enough regularity
we’ll master the art?
aching jaw, empty mailbox, tan line from the ring
vanished, now. night clamors on. the length of the time after you
stretches before me, blazing bright, promises to dwarf
all those summers, to let fallow any claim to what will come
still, I thought something might mark the occasion.
scratch of pen or call through static
but I pull the moon, with mittened fingers, and let it be my answer
selenite, cracked in halves. been over a year since I’ve heard your voice- since we were
seventeen, there was never a time when that was true. but now it will go on
like this. it’s a useless, imprecise melancholy. desolate of wanting. how could I
re-belong to that old desire again
when even my teeth have changed? post-hoc, I find
my old smile behind your camera
such a shatter of a thing, in the photos I pry up from
under the floorboards to zoom in on the geotag, find the name of
that restaurant and do what? think of
returning there, holding a different hand, straight teeth, and
any imagined letter rushing over the frozen falls
the last licks of blue evening, time wailing on, and an
itinerary without you in mind
Brianna Cunliffe is an environmental justice activist, storyteller, and Pushcart-nominated poet. As a queer woman who grew up on a disintegrating coastline, her work explores fiercely loving our fragile homes and their interconnected inhabitants. Recent work appears in Revolute, Vagabond City, Screen Door Review, Storm Cellar, and Reckoning Magazine, and she’s @brie.cunliffe on Instagram.
This month we offer a bee chorus, the last licks of blue evening.
Next month we
rest
Submission guidelines can be found here.
Understanding the Kardashians is understanding America
In conversation with mj corey
“What happens when a person becomes a symbol? Is it inherently exploited? Is it corporatized? Do we kill what’s radical about revolutionary leaders when we do this, especially in the context of today, when everything is saturated by capitalism? Is Kim Kardashian just skipping to the end game, the fate that befalls everybody, while she just chooses to own it? I don’t know. But Kim will be remembered as the token woman at the table of American global symbols, amid Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson and Jeff Bezos. The Kim Kardashian ass is like the McDonald’s Ms Or the Mickey Mouse ears.”
ALTERNATE NAMES FOR MY GENDER
after Danez Smith
- snarling chainsaw
- bee chorus
- honeysuckle
- mayhem of hair
- screen door slammed shut
- summer musk
- razed field
- peeling paint
- the field behind my house
- turning grainy at dusk
- a drop of sweat
- pearling skin
- knees raw with silt
- toolshed burning
- catch of breath
- palm petaled open
- hard to conjure
- fridgehum
- fractured cement
- fog-smeared sky
- falling from another fence
- blackberry-stained hands
- a steady throb
Despy Boutris’s work has been published in Copper Nickel, Guernica, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles.
quebec again
last licks of blue evening, screech of time fast away, I
craft an itinerary without you in mind:
no city is our city any more. one tally mark on the door; decades will follow.
the radio tells me time is
a holy ghost but
like the rest of the trinity I don’t pray to it at all any more
there is nothing and everything I’m impatient for
why do we talk about the dying of the light
like if we grieve with enough regularity
we’ll master the art?
aching jaw, empty mailbox, tan line from the ring
vanished, now. night clamors on. the length of the time after you
stretches before me, blazing bright, promises to dwarf
all those summers, to let fallow any claim to what will come
still, I thought something might mark the occasion.
scratch of pen or call through static
but I pull the moon, with mittened fingers, and let it be my answer
selenite, cracked in halves. been over a year since I’ve heard your voice- since we were
seventeen, there was never a time when that was true. but now it will go on
like this. it’s a useless, imprecise melancholy. desolate of wanting. how could I
re-belong to that old desire again
when even my teeth have changed? post-hoc, I find
my old smile behind your camera
such a shatter of a thing, in the photos I pry up from
under the floorboards to zoom in on the geotag, find the name of
that restaurant and do what? think of
returning there, holding a different hand, straight teeth, and
any imagined letter rushing over the frozen falls
the last licks of blue evening, time wailing on, and an
itinerary without you in mind
Brianna Cunliffe is an environmental justice activist, storyteller, and Pushcart-nominated poet. As a queer woman who grew up on a disintegrating coastline, her work explores fiercely loving our fragile homes and their interconnected inhabitants. Recent work appears in Revolute, Vagabond City, Screen Door Review, Storm Cellar, and Reckoning Magazine, and she’s @brie.cunliffe on Instagram.
Sign up to receive a new issue of Rough Cut Press on the first of each month.
We will never share your contact information without explicit permission.