POETRY | ISSUE SIX
Two Poems
♦
By MARGARITA DELCHEVA | Fall 2015
Horacio Villalobos | c. 1975
Domestic Ugh
The third time you microwave chicken,
it becomes non-chicken and is banished
inside a collapsible whiskey flask,
which stands on the anti-fatigue kitchen mat
and slowly considers the choice between
self-destruction and the inflatable oversized
bowling set someone gave it
for its birthday. The flask is not having
the non-chicken, either, and collapses,
forming a gravity field with a nondescript aroma,
drawing all the whiskey in the world
into a tiny speck, the hardest amber
crux of it’s-over or
chase-me-down with cotton candy
and get on the first starship naked.
it becomes non-chicken and is banished
inside a collapsible whiskey flask,
which stands on the anti-fatigue kitchen mat
and slowly considers the choice between
self-destruction and the inflatable oversized
bowling set someone gave it
for its birthday. The flask is not having
the non-chicken, either, and collapses,
forming a gravity field with a nondescript aroma,
drawing all the whiskey in the world
into a tiny speck, the hardest amber
crux of it’s-over or
chase-me-down with cotton candy
and get on the first starship naked.
This is the Tunnel, Baby
With her red polka-dot skateboard,
the girl on the G train
is slightly hunched-over after work and yet
we know it’s spring – since this morning
the heedless catcalls are back.
From the spray-painted van,
from the manhole down on Marcy,
the jeers multiply painfully, like cats
whose chopped off tails
are also hurting to become cats
by the slightest touch of bourbon or
hyacinth venom at the supermarket gates.
I wonder if the girl in the Chaplin shoes
gets them or if the girl in the emerald skirt
gives them. Her legs have goose pimples,
and so do mine. We didn’t ask for this.
We didn’t sign up for the cold sweat.
Stand clear the closing
legs, she said to the subway door.
There is a point
between Metro and Nassau
where the G jumps up from its rails,
so quick, you could miss it.
|
Margarita Delcheva’s poems have appeared in Sixth Finch, Fugue, and others. She resides in Brooklyn. |
Nat. Brut Issue Six
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!