by Lauren Silex
Rapunzel Cuts Her Hair Every Morning
In my dreams my mother is the skeleton
that never stops clawing from a living grave.
She holds me by my hair with a clenched fist,
drags me across the kitchen floor,
cries when I buzz it all off within three years.
It’s as if I’ve taken the clippers to her own head,
and in a way I have.
We are a house of acquittals.She pulls me under,
baptizes me again and again in holy watered excuses
until the reddest of scars grows a bouquet
of tulips on my mother’s wrist,
which is my wrist,
her wrist,
her father’s wrist.
I wave my hand and it looks like the fall of an axe.
Brimwulf
If I must have an ocean,
it is my childhood broiling inside me,
so much of it locked in abyss.
My body drowns and harbors.
I have a mouthful of goldfish, yellow memories.
They spill out of my throat at the worst times,
smooth whiskey until the taste
of the words settles heavy into the room.
They sharpen, knives in the light,
darting themselves into every corner,
each bangarang of noise,
in monsoons on my pillow
after dreams I never manage to remember
but lie awake shaking from.
All my life there has been a howling.
I’ve carried it this long,
from the heart monitor that would alert
anyone nearby that my rosebud heart had stopped,
to the edges of my college days.
There is nowhere to put it down, this fullness,
a brimming so immense it belongs to the moon.
Necronym (On Deadnames)
It’s not so much dead as it is
road-flattened, constantly twitching,
reminding you of the life not yet beat out of it.
You wouldn’t call a butterfly a caterpillar,
know that you by any other name
would still be you, but better, accurate.
Earth wasn’t perfect in its first form either,
scrapping itself five times before it got it right.
You are no different.
And still they worship that name,
mourn it and pin you for its murder,
revive it again and again
to live out its misery,
gift wrap the body on their tongues,
each syllable a shudder of pain.
No one understands mercy killing,
or the myth of the phoenix.
How you are more alive now than ever.
Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English at Kennesaw State University. Their interests lie heavily in studying American literature and poetry. In addition to publishing their own poetry, Eagerton aims to one day become an editor for a literary magazine and be involved in both sides of the publishing process. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, Kudzu, and Swimming with Elephants Press.
Baltimore artist Lauren Silex comes from generations of creative family. A concern for the environment in 2008 finally her to cut paper collage and the use of recycled materials in her artwork. She uses storytelling to illustrate how the natural world interacts with and is affected by civilization. After applying acrylic paint to a wood substrate, Silex meticulously cuts and glues hundreds of pieces of paper from old magazine pages, atlas pages and coffee table books, etc. The piece is then embellished with detailing in ink and oil pastel. The result is multilayered and rich with meaning. Silex graduated from Prince George’s Community College and the Maryland College of Art and Design. She has had solo shows in Los Angeles and Baltimore, and her work is in several private collections around the country. Published on the covers of the Free State Review, The Mighty Line, and forthcoming issues of Palooka and Gone Lawn literary journals, her collages have also been awarded Best in Show and People’s Choice in 2019.