Featured Poet: Bunny Morris

                 ​emilykneeter CC




MY BODY BLED OUT WHILE CUTTING RED PEPPERS 

I make nothing like love            a reduction: 
    ground basil        /       peach jam   /   pulped blackberries 
    ground baby won’t you touch me just once more? 
   ground basil         /       peach jam  /    pulped blackberries                       over a seared catfish 
                                hip-fucked, up to my pulped blackberry bush I pick and smash and mix my 
ground basil            /       peach jam  /    pulped blackberries and their leaves
                                                                                            blackberries and their leave me 
                                                                                                                                             and / or I’ll cut off 
                                                                                                                                             my pinky finger 
                                                                                                                                                                               CUT 
I cradle Grace’s big knife and part my finger folds / open red for me / 
the pepper caves into my / slide slide slide glide / falling in fourths, un 
afraid of the flesh / afraid of the flesh / afraid of the flesh 
left ungrown / my translucent skin / organs seeded and left unfilled /
you will fill out, you’re just a late bloomer and it takes time my first mother promises /
she did not teach me to cook the things that’d fill me / I learned to prepare
dinner from my second, third, fourth, and fifth mothers / I learned to fall
to the cutting board / learned to prepare myself / to wield 
something sharper than my hands / keep my nails uncut 
and never neglect the serrated edge / my women-loves stack their hands,
hold their inner palms to my outer knuckles / guide the blade 
through my purple pinched ridge of skin / reveal the emptying 
nest of my tendons / my tendons pulled apart 
like seedling strings / they gather like a dying thing / my pinky finger falls
to the cutting board / falling to the cutting board, fingering 
my core / my off-white core with messy need / with messy knife work
                                                                                                                                                                              CUT 
I turn seared catfish: squirming beneath / squirming beneath / tasty beneath
your tongue / flippering from your tooth-cage / I turn hook 
-er and beg / swell and grow / my shellfish sick lover / retch 
and keep me folded in your pocket square                        / I’ll eat myself so quietly
you’ll forget I made you cum to pleasure-tremor 
                                                  come from pleasure-tremor 
                                                  come back from your seizure / I’ll eat myself so quietly 
you won’t hear a thing as I slice and shave until I find the ectoplasm of a once-woman
slipping translucent through my hungry hands 
                                                                                                                                                                               CUT






NON PERISHABLE FOOD  

                  some hungry creature 
nurses at the cross 
of my legs. 
                  he babbles, 
yearns from the deep. 
                  please, never wake me— let me stay naked forever? 
                  half born baby brogues 
peek from my folds 
                  double why chromosomal toes trade spaces 
                  follow each step exactly 
                  measure 
teaspoonfulls of boyhood, body-shaped, rounded heap 
                  each scoop bubbles then browns— oh fuck, 
                  does the cookbook call for salt or testosterone? 
please, won’t you let me be a pretty boy, the kind that wears rose colored blush? 
                   he looks soft and small, should I scoop 
him with a slotted spoon? can you hear him sleep, 
                   snore, and grey? why does he 
look like each and every man who loves me? 
become me, become me, become me 
                  why won’t he be my batter? 
                  why won’t he 
stand at my back 
to spread butter, or 
get stuck between my thumbs— 
                   why won’t he possess my blue turned hands to select a grown boy’s button-up 
to cover my flea breasts?
                   he pulls 
away from my spoon, my machine and me, we beat and beat and beat and beat 
                   my heart to boy heart, why won’t he blend? 
​                   he separates each toe; 
as egg yolk, pooled 
between flour mounds, 
                    why must you keep me 
as woman?






​LIST OF THINGS THAT TURN ME ON 

I proposed to myself last night over a glass of champagne. 

me and my new wife took turns naming kinks. 

muscle memory. I flung my mouth open: spirals, ropes, forced feminization--

I got wet when she said chronic illness. when she said snuff porn, I pooled

​in homemade lavender syrup and never turned back. 

there’s nothing to do but drink: mimosas, apple pie moonshine

we fill our tummies round and bouncing. 

outside, everyone is afraid of bursting 

at the belly. the world bends to scoop alcohol from the public’s lungs.

we watch them press washcloths with their feet to soak up the sick.

we gag in our room. gurgle and spit up the same illness over and over.

we will teach you how to boil the sick to sweet, even though for you,

the ache is only temporary.​


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Bunny Morris is a queer poet from Louisville, Kentucky. They are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Creative Writing and LGBTQ+ studies at the University of Louisville. Their work revolves around their experiences as a trans sex worker, with a focus on sexuality, gender, and the interaction between trauma and pleasure.

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