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POETRY | ISSUE SIX
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Two Poems

​♦
By JUSTIN WYMER | Fall 2015
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c. 1915


​Dear E.,


​
​Three thin friends were given spells to cast and I thought
again of you. A shoe

appeared last night in the ashtray on the eave, the blush of deer-
offal. I’m not privy to

the nature of the spells. My groin has split from the heft 
of me. Two-

inch declivity sharp-banked like a taproot knew to attach there but
was pulled soon

after it sucked the glib. The doctor tells me I must not force-feed 
my organs too

often lest I count on the long fidelity of laming as companion, and
rule. A rule you

and I agreed should not be savored, but gulped, and expand 
therein, pitched as the clue

of blood on a pocket square. Square as the expiration sticker on a pack
of numbles, blue

and globbish under clear film in a butcher shop. In my own bed
now, I can’t fool

myself into thinking the sky is light with snow, or that I’m a sash or 
feather come unglued.

If I loved you less, I would tell you I’ve never not 
loved not you.

Gather close to all the hoglike about me—but that isn’t 
true—E., who’ll

wrangle and master me down again, now the poplin of night drops
so often, and soon?



Yours, J
​


Mannequin


The world is changing so I bought a mannequin to watch it with me. 

The world is changing so I beheaded the mannequin so he’d see


                   softer things.

I thought to steal a box cutter to open the two of us up to the change.

I left the mannequin alone for a week and returned to find

                   his hips had slimmed.

I told the mannequin my name when we met but he never used it

                   lest familiarity get the better.

The mannequin knew not to trash the roses until there was 

                   no need to remember. 

The mannequin remembered peach-smell, trunk-smell, the unkinder 


                    smell of others. 

Next to the mannequin I left a pitcher of milk whenever I left our home. 

Around the mannequin I arranged a circle of spoons filled with 

                   shallow water for the bees. 

Whenever the mannequin wished to be a lark I could use him as a raft 

 
                   with his hollow bones.

The mannequin insisted on taking his meals alone. 

The mannequin owned half of the air in our home. 

The mannequin said departure only expedites the inevitable. 

The mannequin often wished to be a lark. 

The mannequin knew what skin I slept in and would sometimes look, 


                    sometimes look away. 

The mannequin remained upright but didn’t exhale. 

Looking into the space the mannequin’s face had been I saw traces 

                     of static like burrs. 

The mannequin shifted when the window-light sashed across his waist 


                     and I knew he was asking who’d once loved me.

For my mannequin I stole a different mannequin who had a fist 

                     permanently clenched. 

I pulled off the wrist and dipped it in iodine I’d mixed into 

                      the pitcher-milk. 

I pinned it to his left chest to gift him a real appropriate heart. 

The mannequin prefers the bathroom with the almanac to the bedroom 

 
                      skewed with restless sun.

The mannequin I’d thought once whispered to suggest how to hold my 

 
                      hands when my hands when I’m asking.

The mannequin’s voice sounded better drugged-shut at the sight of me                        

                       touching the bell jar or myself.

Long-fingered mannequin he injects my dream with jittery 
 

                      insect content. 

If the mannequin wanted he could sail past death itself. 

If he wanted he could turn on the lamp himself.






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Justin Wymer is a writer, translator, and educator from West Virginia. Currently, he's working on a poetry project inspired by accounts of angels in apocryphal texts and everyday conversation.



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Nat. Brut Issue Six

$35.00
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Issue Six is our second in print, and features work by Cristina de Middel, Afabwaje Kurian, Chitra Ganesh, Jayson Musson, and more! Issue Six also comes with limited edition supplements: All of Them Witches, a 32-page risograph-printed comic re-interpreting 1950s Harvey Horror comics, plus volume four of our comics section, Early Edition!

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