ISSUE ONE: Trams Yell Yes! | next poem →

neces(sit)ies

Vanessa Couto Johnson

You tell me how the excrement of owls is oral. You blink slowly and your eyes rephrase
themselves.

Mosquitoes hum in your living room until I tell you. You shut the door as I pin one in
hand. We don't let them eat.

I make my leg acute on a chair at the café, asking if this is your method for double knots.
One adult touching another adult's shoelaces, the turn and turn and enter. Shoe stay.

Soups or solids. Salads with goat cheese hoofsteps. My lactiferous ducts near the plate.

Whatever I am, you trace me, testing the cartilage of my nose with a press. We refuse
stencils. We say that will be all.

Fry-piles make a half-moon on your plate while you continue a life of starch and iron.
Those things I take off of you. One by one button. Meet and potato.

Vanessa Couto Johnson recently earned her MFA from Texas State University. Her work has appeared in Hot Metal Bridge, shufPoetry, A cappella Zoo, Liebamour, blossombones, and other places. She has poems forthcoming in Star 82 Review, Sassafras, Eratio, and Dinosaur Bees. She runs treksift.com, blogs at meansofpoetry.com, and has a BA in both English and philosophy from Rice University.

ISSUE ONE: Trams Yell Yes! | next poem →







ISSUE ONE: Trams Yell Yes!

Craig Kurtz
    Index Denied
    Reinvestment Order

Erin Dorney
    This Is Not A Poem About
       Fast Food

    Left

Rose Swartz
   Odalisque
   Quondam

Tim Kahl
    Plasma Globe

Alison McCabe
    I Watch Myself Loop

Dan Boehl
   excerpts from whatever
       from @emoemoji

Vanessa Couto Johnson
    (t)ravel
    neces(sit)ies

Valentina Cano
    Planned Remodeling

Ryan Napier
    Seasonal Affective Disorder

Terry Wolverton
    Sizzle and Chew

Gregory Crosby
    Satan's Skull Glows White Hot

Lea Galanter
    When Lost in the Woods

Jake Sheff
    Stasis in Ragtime

Angelica Poversky
    Enough

Mercedes Lawry
    In Late November, There Are
       Days of False Clemency