by Rachel Stempel

---

for my future dermatologist

It’s Thursday
and it’s late
and you’ve lost
your right hand
to science
and your left hand’s
limp

Your knuckles
bulge
and stare
cockeyed

You forget how
your playground politics
made illegible
every
          good
                     thing
you got your greasy
                      little
            mitts
on

 *

It’s Thursday
and it’s late
so I lose time
to the mirror

This is how
I age myself

I started a skincare routine too late

My palm cups
a tiny acid
broth, drops
of retinol
and hyaluronic
leave
my face
raw, pink
and primed
for my worst
sunburn
of the season

*

All poetry is failed
stand up
I’m sick of
sensationalism

“Marriage” is
a mouthful
so I chew
a whole pack
of gum

I spit it out
and knead it
like taffy
‘til the stickiness
melts—

                tap tap tap
beneath my undereyes,

my index fingers,
tiny mallets

 Oh, elastic reverb!
I’m saving myself
for a future
pounding

Make me great
but leave me
clay-like, wet

I want to be
everything
at once, a flesh
interrobang

---

Rachel Stempel is a genderqueer Ukrainian-Jewish poet and PhD candidate in English at Binghamton University. They are the author of the chapbooks Interiors (Foundlings Press, 2021) and BEFORE THE DESIRE TO EAT (Finishing Line Press, 2022). They currently live in New York with their rabbit, Diego.

Diamante Lavendar lives in the Midwest US. She enjoys using art as a medium to explore the issues of life with a strong emphasis on spirituality. Most of her work is mixed media digital art which includes some or all of the following: photography, fractals, drawing, painting, and digital art.