by Jill Gewirtz
Things we swallow
Force-fed:
Brake-slam shards of home-spun chaos,
fire-fed, machine gun bullets.
A heavy dose of preteen vulnerability,
washed down with a tall glass of neglect.
A sustained ingestion of name-calls, over-sized chunks fried in a thick oil
of self-rejection, causing severe choking and breathing difficulties
Self-fed:
An entire cake of self-love: eat piece by piece, you may be cautious at first
but allow yourself to devour it with bright-eyed appetite;
enjoy each slice as its own entity and as part of a whole.
The clear cornflower blue sky at noon: pour it into your mouth, diligently,
do not waste one drop.
A burgeoning coral reef: savour each bright colour on the tongue,
taste every polyp.
Expel:
Every force-fed thing you ever absorbed.
David Hanlon is a welsh poet living in Cardiff. He is a Best of the Net nominee. You can find his work online in over 50 magazines, including Rust & Moth, Feral Journal, The Daily Drunk Mag & Amethyst Review. His first chapbook, Spectrum of Flight is available for purchase now at Animal Heart Press. You can follow him on Twitter @davidhanlon13 and on Instagram @welshpoetd.
Jill Gewirtz ( she/ hers) is a native New Yorker who has been creating art, be it music, photography, jewelry making, since childhood. Currently, she is doing photo construction, sculptural work with photographs, collages, transfers on mirrors and image transparency film transfers. Her image from the Museum of the City of New York’s show ‘Rising Waters, Hurricane Sandy’ was recently accepted into the permanent collection at the Museum of the City of New York. Her photos have appeared in museum group shows at Marin Museum, Marietta Cobb, Masur, Katonah, Monmouth, Attleboro, Griffin and Hockaday and Cica Museums of Art and Berlin Biennial with the Julia Cameron Awards. Jessica Porter curated a small group show including Gewirtz and 2 painters, Joyce Pommer and Elise Freda at the Yard in New York. Most recently her work has been in multiple shows at Con Artist Collective in the Lower East Side.