Anti-Heroin Chic
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Music
  • Art
  • Comedy
  • About Our Contributors
  • Masthead
  • Issues
  • About our contributors - 2019
  • About Our Contributors - 2020
  • About Our Contributors - 2021
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Music
  • Art
  • Comedy
  • About Our Contributors
  • Masthead
  • Issues
  • About our contributors - 2019
  • About Our Contributors - 2020
  • About Our Contributors - 2021
Search by typing & pressing enter

YOUR CART

​

9/1/2018

Poetry By Ahja Fox

Picture
     Piero Fissore Flickr


Shallow Water Blackout
 
This is a guided meditation,
an acetone wash.
 
Spill arms into water.
If there is none, fill the tub.
Pretend there is seaweed, rope.
 
Brush your skin against its skin.
Remember your mother.
 
No repetitive underwater laps. One lap, breathe.
Breathe and let the head be a click back
of body.
The nervous system, a cnidarian--
coral polyp or medusa.
 
It’s like riding
your bike or a man.
Remember that man
said your mother was medusa
and you bought a snake.
 
You could hold a body
as your mother,
emerald, lamella,
could pretend the rope
is her skin.
 
Let the water be
body to your remembering
of a man stealing your bike
and your mother.
 
Rope is snaking
from the tub out of the door.
 
Breathe. Feel it brush
against your skin,
your nervous system
clicking, ticking
until it remembers.
 
By now you are your mother,
arms spilling out of the tub.
Breathe. You are medusa.
Emerald, lamella.
 
*the italicized part comes from a poster on http://www.shallowwaterblackoutprevention.org




Daughter


You were raised rolling
Your tongue into questions
The size of a boy bloated by breaking
*
I know from experience
How girls sink
Into photos, suddenly                          
And without clothes
*
Your father walked
Tight-lipped, holding days ahead
Like ripped pages
*
They were snatched
By beating
Winds claiming a body
Already gone
*
I saw you
With blue shoelaces
Knotted in your hair
*
You cracked baby Jesus in half
Severed Mary’s arm
As you swept in the shadow
Of a half-ton cross
*
I saw you
With the same blue shoelaces
In a strip club
*
Your legs, latex triggers
To a video store on Dayton
I licked Pop Rocks off that clerk counter
Off the clerk, it burned
*
Does it burn
Roaming the streets
In search of a birthday
Cake crown-splintered by drums?
*
Last year, it was vanilla
Buttercream splitting
Words on daddy’s headstone
*
You sang a song about angels
Holding lost boys in their wings
Another about hanging
From a telephone wire
*
The embalming table
Doesn’t speak
And our tongues lavender twist
Lay low in a ravine
Renamed each time by the last thing
Swallowed
*
I like to be swallowed
By a sleeve
Your juicy fruit clacking a tick tick
Tocking bomb
*
We both woke 
Without our faces
Pulled our teeth out of mud


Picture
Ahja Fox is a poet obsessed with bodies/ body parts (specifically the throat). Her tagline is ‘#suicidebywriting’ and her muses are dead things found among the living. Ahja can be found around Denver reading at various events and open mics or co-hosting at Art of Storytelling. She has recently decided to end her educational hiatus and is going for her BA in English-Literature/Creative Writing at UCD. She publishes in online and print journals like Five:2:One, Driftwood Press, Rigorous, Noctua Review, SWWIM , Tuck Magazine, and more. She has also recently been included in the 2018 Punch Drunk Anthology. Follow her on Instagram or Twitter at aefoxx.

Kate Redmond
8/10/2022 03:23:19 pm

Hey, congratulations! I of course went right off looking for your poetry and it is marvelous. Poetry will save us all!!!


Comments are closed.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    March 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.