PINCH by Victoria Iacchetta
PULL by Victoria Iacchetta
MURDER POEM by Natalie Eleanor Patterson
I hold my chin in my hand and look out over a Greek ocean. This time it’s warm, takes shape in blue and white, the sweat between my fingers as I slowly melt into the sea. In that: I will see her body in every grocery store aisle, iced like aging fish. In every undulation of blackwater after the evening of my discontent takes its leave. In my bed, her eyes are open and staring blankly at the ceiling, flies dancing in and out of the open window as the sun sets red as poppies. There is no God in Dreamland, only the heat of a fallen summer as it fucks itself, again and again. I wonder, does a person ever get used to death? Or must I feel like a child every time? The barren field, the lonely flower, the foot sinking into the mud. When I say Death, I mean all kinds. In the dream, at least, I think it is a dream, I think I will live with this shame forever, I think I will not live. And the body I have killed, which, of course, wears my face, nods solemnly, flesh peeling off bones in the idyllic Mediterranean sun.
Natalie Eleanor Patterson is a half-Cuban femme lesbian poet and editor from suburban Georgia currently working on her BA in English and Creative Writing at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. She has work featured in Neologism, Sinister Wisdom, Hunger Mountain, Collision, and Club Plum Literary Journal. She received the Katherine B. Rondthaler Award in Poetry in 2018, and a Best of the Net 2018-2019 nomination. She works as an assistant editor for Jacar Press and a reader for One Magazine and is currently editing an anthology of new LGBTQ writing. Find her on Twitter @natalieepatt or at poetnatalie.com.
Victoria Iacchetta, of Spencerport, New York, is currently working towards a Master’s degree in London, England. Her first chapbook, “The Cubicle” was published with Gap Riot Press in November of 2019. Recent poetry and artwork have appeared in Crêpe & Penn and Ang(st) Zine. Other poems or artwork have appeared in: The Honey Mag, The Gravity of the Thing, Ghost City Press, The Sunlight Press, Vamp Cat Magazine, Bottlecap Press, and Peach Mag.