ISSUE THIRTEEN | FALL 2019
thank u Rihanna
when Rihanna said do my tits
bother you? they’re covered in Swarovski crystals
girl! to all those white reporters in smoky
black eyeshadow & baby pink fur stole, head
tilting like a soft gazelle, body a studded
brown comet in motion, her laugh the laugh
of furious Medusa with serpents whittled down
to quick flashes of light, open grin
a glossy fish gone swimming through my blue
maze of blood to heal something deep
& nameless inside me, I took that moment
in my mouth & swallowed it
like medicine. there’s something about
the cosmos mapped onto a woman’s
tits that makes girls dream of turning
themselves into incandescence.
in another timeline I too throw my head back
& laugh, 250,000 Swarovski crystals sewn
across the copper landscape of my body,
a glittering aftermath of meteorites,
a girl-shaped disco ball reflecting enough
camera flash to lose the importance
of flesh, to become nothing else
but multiplicities of daylight.
inheritance of glaciers
i.
my Lolo was framing his mother / in sunlight strokes, brush-to-long-dimness of salakot’s shadow / falling over the piña fabric / of her humble baro't saya / when the Japanese entered / without knocking / & slung him like a rice sack / over their shoulders
/ to cage him on a lonely ship / to christen him anew / painter turned forger
/ of mickey mouse pesos
ii.
when my windpipe filled with chlorine water / in the 10-foot deep-end of Valcartier / my lungs were phantom-carved by an ocean’s apparition
/ into gaping wound / pillar of salt / winter re-casted as grime & girl-organ / was I drowning
/ or remembering the one before me? / was it my body flailing
/ toward my Lolo’s shape?
iii.
is it his ghost who shakes my teeth in December? / my skin is brown and so was my Lolo’s / brown meaning: possessed by summer / so take my rawness / my glaciers / my arms gone pale
/ send me seraphs / send me scorching / deliver me a mouth that I could die inside the heat of / only then will I stop shouting / my ancestral terror
/ of dampness / below-zero / & boats I’ve never
/ leapt from
Louie Leyson is a Filipina-Canadian writer based in Vancouver. She currently studies literature as an undergrad at the University of British Columbia.
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