1 poem
by Alex Manebur
Alex Manebur is a writer based in both California and Iowa. She has created three self-illustrated and handmade chapbooks and was a finalist for the LA Youth Poet Laureate in 2019. Currently, she reads for the BreakBread Literacy Project and has work forthcoming in Flying Ketchup Press and Camas.
& the light curves inward & my body unfolds
I hope my ancestors don’t guide me anywhere.
In fact, I hope there’s no ghosts so they can’t
watch me do shit. I hope they’re nothing but
old bones and maggot hometowns. Reality
only starts where belief ends. Between tramadol
bible pages, drunk spit tincture breath, blood
letting as cheap respite, here we are to bask
in what everyone ignored till now. As my nail
beds fold over each other I am left with their
same bruises, dead or not. Their same false
youths and their same summers. We’re just
midnight in the absence of philosophy and god
in the absence of hourglasses.
& under my breast is a pillbox full of pink salt.
Better than the hipsters but not unfull of regret
and carnage. Together we will coast in seizure.
We talk of the future like a secret. Our rhythm
was chaos, time was all at once, we did not
fear failure, it had already happened. My vanity
is more than skin deep. Use DNA to floss my
teeth. In my dreams the gingivitis reaches my
brain. I am lost to the relapse of hope.