Please check this out: Oscar’s poem is in it! So proud of you love! <3

•  

  Next to herself, the body was all
  that mattered to her. It was the opposite
  of her greatest fear: the city
  in which she lived, where streets sprouted
  overnight like weeds and snaked their way
  into dead ends or through each other’s
  aimlessness. Peopled to the brim and heavy
  with smog, in the city it made
  no sense to look
  up. There were no stars to lend order
  to the nameless night, not even
  street signs to follow-they were never in the right
  places, nor were there lamps to keep them
  in sight.

  The body was a different matter.
  She drew her scalpel across its skin
  with the certainty of a lover tracing
  the distance from his city
  to his beloved’s across the map.
  She undressed it to the bone, descending
  each layer in pursuit of geography,
  following each twist of a nerve, each turn
  of a vessel, like a traveler prowling
  a city’s streets for the first time.
  She staked her claim on its parts,
  bestowing on each its proper name.

  But naming could not keep its landscape
  the same. Soon maggots descended
  upon the body, changing overnight
  what she thought
  was conquered territory.

  Another siren howled in the city
  she preferred to keep
  outside her window. She took her eyes
  off the body and looked up,
  the city moving into her eyes
  before she could brush the maggots
  off the body
  with the back
  of her gloved hand.

  
  

If I may, dear player,

            my favorite bullshitter, let me say

                                    steer clear of those women, proud in their heels,

their store-bought feminism, and love me

                        instead, mousy-haired and well-read,

                                    able to read genre for your sake,

                                                able to take slasher in your company.

Lay down your arms where I can

                                    stay in them and send me to the moon, forget the freaks

we ran away from one afternoon by the library, the guard whistling in the hall,

                                                the howl and swagger and the fall—
Don’t we all stoop and deliver?

Much treasured: My autographed copy of elsewhere held and lingered 

New poetry books!
The Collapse of What Separates Us by Vincenz Serrano
elsewhere held and lingered by Conchitina Cruz (signed copy!!!)