Xandria Phillips is the poetry editor at Honeysuckle Press and the author of the Reasons for Smoking (Seattle Review, 2017) and the forthcoming Hull (Nightboat, 2019). Their writing has been featured in Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.
if this city is still breaking me
in with its weather and tethered eye
you be the arch in my neck
the mane growing from it
the hive swells outside
as its residents itch to lick our inner walls
for moisture and respite
hovering their mouths
like two men
moments before
they turn on each other
that is how the grass smells
in the dream where I run without breasts I am motivated by flight, I haven’t yet begun to unweld the framework, invent new trauma, whip the stitch arching each bosom as victuals dangled, withheld. when I hemorrhage against design it ain’t incognito. the neighbors walk their dogs past me. that’s me smoking in the alley, letting roses from my wrists.
my heaven innard
turned to land
apostled lips
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