Issue 2: embodied
i don’t want to write a modern love essay
Sophie crocker
but i hate that a girl has to be baptized
in blood. i don’t want a lobotomy & i’m tired
of carrying an ice pick. the trick
where i hold my breath until i turn
into a flock of crows & remember the face
of every bad man—i used to live off it,
pecking wet lettuce off the pavement.
even the good men say that one of me
is called a murder. i don’t want to be
a survivor anymore but i don’t want another story
ending in girl bones. i don’t want to write a Modern Vengeance essay
but if i didn’t i’d be so easy to kill. i don’t want to wait
at the glory hole with open scissors but i don’t want
to be waterboarded until i am a raven again
but i don’t want what’s already been done to me but
i don’t want to be another snuff film star but i don’t want
black wings to perish in. when the sirens
pass i still say, “my ride is here.” sure, i’m not scared
anymore. but i remember every face, even the kind ones.
memory foam
Sophie crocker
lately, every sound
is an air raid siren.
a wineglass shatters
& i wonder
what i’ve done so wrong.
if we’d never kissed
maybe i’d never die. glowing-boned
whipping girl i’m impossible
to bury
yet always necessitating
gravity. through my keyhole
you called me
a bitch crying wolf. i hate
how much i believe—
inside myself with grief.
if i could, i’d devour you
forever. all day i spend
in bed like a bad daydreamer.
fetal position—a nebula. at least
a bitch limps home
& everyone feeds her treats.
at least if you gave me a wound
it’d grow teeth. at least you tried to eat me
with the wrong wretched meat. i still don’t know
what to do
with the polaroids of you
before you
carjacked my
cunt. fucking
lunatic i’ve got
dog fists now. now
i gnash
possessed
by survival
instinct. i think your god
& my god are different.
the god of martyr-making
v. the god of resilience.
paltry false messiah
for once
die for your own sins.
Sophie Crocker is an artist based on stolen Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSÁNEĆ land. Her writing has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2023, PRISM International, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, “brat,” was released in fall 2022 from Gordon Hill Press. Find her online at @goblinpuck (Twitter and IG) and at sophiecrocker.com.