ISSUE SEVEN: May Sell Tyres | next poem →

Mouth-Off (III)

Sonya Vatomsky

To bring yourself back from the dead you need flour, to start.
Rather a lot of it, and tallow candles,
with fat from the butcher. Mention my name — I loved him once,
but there's a reason you don't hear ever-afters
about butchers. Avoid lingering,
chitchat. Avoid eye-contact. Avoid the fine red meats,
for now.
Flour, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, salt,
yeast. Wait 2 hours.
Rise.
Push down, let rise one more hour.
Let it catch up to you after sixty soft minutes,
let it walk behind you like a frightening thing in the dark,
let it breathe you in and fill your thin skin out,
let it end and begin you completely until, the final minute,
the final, final minute,
fearing stillbirth,
still life with two apples,
a pear:
let it be standard дрожжевое тесто,
turning aureate in the oven.
A gold ring, a yellow liferaft.

Sonya Vatomsky is a Moscow-born, Seattle-raised feminist poet and essayist whose work appears in No Tokens, VIDA, Hermeneutic Chaos, Bone Bouquet, and elsewhere. She edits and reviews poetry at Fruita Pulp & her chapbook MY HEART IN ASPIC is part of Porkbelly Press' 2015 line-up. Find her online at sonyavatomsky.tumblr.com and @coolniceghost.

ISSUE SEVEN: May Sell Tyres | next poem →













ISSUE SEVEN: May Sell Tyres

Jill Khoury
   [posterior vitreous detachment]
   Colony

Sonya Vatomsky
   Mouth-Off (III)
   The Serbo-Croatian language
      uses the same word, čičak,
      for burdock and Velcro

Kamden Hilliard
   no baby but the poem is about you

Jessica Schouela
   The Funeral

Chris Campanioni
   Working Models

Sarah Ann Winn
   Suburban Thaw
   Rolling Acres Mall, Abandoned

Cynthia Conte
   Number three star: Fast years

Diane Gage
   Nanobiomaximum
   Dear John (Cage)

John Lowther
   a sonnet from 555

Rebecca Yates
   What is "Emoji"?

Glen Armstrong
   Archivist

Marta Ferguson
   The Nether as Pizza Parlor

September Hinkle
   Surviving Charlie