I Am A Liar by Rahele Megosha

October 18, 2023 Columbia Quarto

I am alive and I am learning and I love my mom. Give me a moment so I can call her.
She is at church but she still stepped out to take my call. I am so lucky that when my
mom says she loves me and I say I love you too, she responds by saying I love you too
just so she can say it last. I am so lucky because I am 19 and I am alive and my sister is
my best friend who gives the greatest hugs. I am so lucky because my brother tries to
help me even when I get super stressed and take it out on him. I am so grateful I am in
school and have people that love me. People want to hear my voice. I am so proud of
myself for being alive. I am so proud of myself for living. Today is a day of reminders. I
am reminded that I have blood in my body and that I have survived. I am surviving.
I am alive.

Rahele (she/her) studies dead things and alive things and writes about both. She is constantly finding new disguises in her hairstyles, so don’t worry if you can’t find her…. Anyways, you can find her on Instagram @rahele.megosha.

The Imposition by Chiamaka Kanu

October 16, 2023 Columbia Quarto

I thought I’d never be able to break free

Why would I?

When living in the comfort of your embrace
felt so good?
Felt so right?
Felt free.

Chiamaka (she/her) is a second-year at Barnard College studying Neuroscience & Behavior and English. She has been writing for as long as she can remember, starting with short stories, and recently found a home in poetry. She likes trying new things. You can find her on instagram @chichi.kanu.

dandelion child by Rahele Megosha

October 15, 2023 Columbia Quarto

the house stood on old ground
the lawn still mud
did i grow from this ungarden? did she?
did we get mowed over every few weeks
relentless and unforgiving?
garbage bags of dandelions

but when there was nothing to resist anymore
when he left and she came back
i was as green as ever
clipped and crisp
beautiful and disgustingly uninteresting

now the soft dandelion lives inside
she is finally given care to nurture
unnatural yes
but she has transformed
and she is new

my orchid
how i miss you

Princes in the Tower (an unsent letter) by Natalie DiFusco

October 11, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Content warning: mentions of death and blood

Based on the murder of 12-year-old Prince Edward V of England and his brother, 9-year-old Prince Richard, Duke of York in the Tower of London

Dearest Mother,

I have become fossilized in a summer of stone,
a summer of waiting,
a summer of depravity

O Mother,
how I cradle his face in my hands,
for isn’t his smooth cheek that of a babe’s?

London planes beckon me with their spindly fingers
their leaves murmur, asking to brush against Richard’s golden locks
this scraping on glass, this mockery,
sends currents down my back, icy and unforgiving
a touch so unlike your own

O Mother,
show me your face once more
so that I may memorize the exact blue
that your pupil drowns in,
the blue that I am unable to carry on

My mouth is now acquainted with the tips of my thumbs
they point upwards toward a god
I release myself to him; I confess, I confess
and I dare not ask if he listens
do you listen?

O Mother,
where are you?
two months and seventeen days,
I was not yet able
to feel the gold dig into my skull
to feel the slight space between your hand and my back
before stepping into greatness

I remember our last day of true sunlight here:
in the garden,
the breeze knit itself between our fingers,
carried our light laughter,
a breeze whose absence is now noticed
the sun warmed patches of our skin,
stilled us
made us forget the cold dark damp
that awaited us

O Mother,
I promise Richard this:
whatever that may happen,
my body is his shield
whatever dagger that dare spill our blood
will spill mine first

We wait for the airy brush of black fabric
when at last, our fate is revealed
and the blackbird sings

Murder me, uncle, Lord Protector
place bones breaths boys in boxes, Lord Protector
splatter red for gain of purple, Lord Protector
tear nightgown tear innocence tear us away from a mother, Lord Protector
place us in a white dollhouse, Lord Protector
smear shit on my cheeks my chin, Lord Protector
make me do a dance make me a fool, Lord Protector
rip rave roar rage. race me, race me, Lord Protector
erase our names our bodies come August, Lord Protector
I will always be your predecessor, Lord Protector, King

Natalie (she/her) is a junior at Barnard studying English and French. She’s from Long Island and can usually be found among the trees in Riverside Park, listening to music. You can find her on Instagram @nataliedifusco.

Women in Reflection by Nina Halberstadter

October 9, 2023 Columbia Quarto

I was quite young when I saw my grandmother’s bare body for the first time.
She stood in front of the mirror and buttoned her nightshirt. I sat propped up with feathery
pillows that flattened into the wall on my side of the bed, the side where my grandfather once
slept. A breakfast tray in front of me with unfamiliar oatmeal growing cold and congealed
before my grandma learned to make it the way I liked it, with salt instead of sugar, which was
the way she’d liked it all along.

Her breasts hung low and large.
She was not embarrassed, but felt they warranted an explanation.
She told me how she was from a long line of women with bones too big, soft skin stretched too
far.
She used to stare at her own grandmother’s naked reflection, her big drooping bosom, her
stomach that cascaded down to her knees. She couldn’t imagine what a body would have to go
through to become like that.
She turned away from the mirror and gestured toward herself. And now, look at me!

The nightshirt was my grandfather’s too, the same shade of brownish red as our bedsheets and
her lipstick and the nosebleeds I sometimes got at night that left an invisible stain.

When he died, I don’t really remember. I remember telling my grandmother that I could be her
husband instead. I was in the backseat of the car while my mom drove us all over the train tracks
toward home. The sun was setting fast and I could not see the reaction on my grandma’s face as
she looked out the window of the passenger seat at the darkening sky.

My mom taught me that my grandmother’s breasts were bigger than they should be and that is
how she knew he loved her. At a steakhouse, or a poker game, or one of the select smokey
settings I could picture from their newlywed years in the 50s, my grandmother had pulled her
tight sweater away from her chest in shame. No, my grandfather had said. I like how you are.
This story passed from her to my mother to me.

I was quite young still when I cried for my own body for the first time. Aeropostale shirts my
friends wore that hugged too tightly to my tummy and pulled too long, down to my knees. I
remember girls comparing numbers on the scale in third grade and learning mine was too high,
learning my hunger was too great, learning thighs shouldn’t brush against each other when
walking and nobody else preferred their oatmeal with salt.

I wanted breasts that men would watch and tell me not to be ashamed of. But I skipped lunches
and they didn’t come. In seventh grade, I cried again because no one would love my feathery
chest that flattened into itself and refused to bloom. I cried for the black velvet dress my mother
gave me from her teenage years that couldn’t prop itself up. For the long line of big boned
women I had betrayed with my efforts to look nothing like them. When I squinted into the
mirror I saw nothing soft or familiar, only patchwork pieces to alter and mend.

My grandma died with a stomach shrunken from sickness, her appetite consumed by the cancer
that ate her from within. My mom said she’d been trying her whole life to get that thin. She
could never have imagined what her body would go through to become like that. The two of us
sat and wondered about the shapes we would take in heaven. We went through her jewelry
together and I kept her ring even though it slipped off my slender thumb and clattered to the
floor. I told myself I would grow into it.

I watch my mom in the mirror now, trying on beautiful linen dresses and saying she can’t believe
her own reflection. She claims she does not recognize the round stomach that raised me or the
cushioned chest on which I lay my head. She stares into the mirror and tells me she sees her
mother. Now, look at me!

I do look, and I see them both in the car in the darkness, reaching for each other’s hands with me
in the backseat.

Nina Halberstadter (she/her) is a senior at Columbia College studying Urban Studies and Public Health. You can find her on Instagram @nina_halbs and Facebook.

My Campaign for the Expansion of Crayola Crayons by Ashley Yung

September 19, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Crayola Crayons manufacture 120 colors,
and a child’s ability to dream is hindered here.
He or she finds themself drawn within
these bounds, their imagination detained to:

Goldenrod. There is the absence of night-time
in Fairfax, California, so when her mother does
not come home, she can pretend it’s been
one long day, where the valley never blinked.

It stared her right in the eye, Goldenrod, fitted
within the dust of its broad and trodden-down
shoulders. To tell this story is to conjure a photo,
without wind. Because of her, Crayola invented

...

Midnight Blue. In Russian, “blue” is too broad.
Their tongue insistent on the binary between “siniy”
(dark blue) and “goluboy” (light blue)¹. When we ex-
pand Crayola Crayons, we expand linguistics itself.

Midnight Blue is a color without company, it oozes
like watercolor, like watermarks on a page—the
sound of rustling in the garden behind my house,
which is different than Sky Blue: when a good thing

Happens, and we cannot trace back why it constricts
us. The opposite of tears falling freely, as the clock
strikes Midnight Blue. Crayola Crayon places
a vocabulary in our hands. Might not we shatter like

...

Antique Brass, since the Socratic Method was
designed for men². A long, long time ago, when
coloring books were regulated. When tests were
taken in black & white. Before a girl could turn in

A poem as an argumentative speech. And say here
is my campaign for the expansion of Crayola Crayons,
as a legacy. May someone have the language of forget-
me-not-red & broken-by-begonias & tearless ebony &
always yellow to express herself in such a way

Long after me.

Author’s Note: Goldenrod, Midnight Blue, Sky Blue and Antique Brass are all real Crayola Crayon colors.

¹ Winawer, J., et al. “Russian Blues Reveal Effects of Language on Color Discrimination.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 19, 30 Apr. 2007, pp. 7780–7785, www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780, 10.1073/pnas.0701644104. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019.

² Gersen, Jeannie. THE SOCRATIC METHOD in the AGE of TRAUMA.

Ashley (she/her) is a senior in Columbia College studying English and political science. Growing up meant realizing that she has a co-dependent relationship with summer and semi-colons. You can find her on Instagram @ashley.yung

To What Lengths Would I Go To Protect Myself? by Rahele Megosha

August 19, 2023 Columbia Quarto

i imagine not far // there is not much to protect // skin and soul alike mean little to me
// its you they serve and provide for // is it you that would gain more value by my heart
and touch? // is it you that shouldve been my shield? // can i survive without this
service // desiccation in mother cave // wilt without water // it feels dry // the air //
only for you my giver // i bloom // such is my only protection // from the silting of soul

Perfect by Sophie Askanase

August 15, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Writing in the sun n all of a sudden problems don’t exist
shadows illuminate the contour on my face n I am perfect
We are perfect
The walls between me n the world seem blurred ever since that acid trip
which maybe explains why I usually take on all problems as my own
But today,

Today, the sun is shining after weeks of decay
birds sing in the streets n I don’t wanna strangle them
first sip of my iced coffee’s the perfect temperature

Today, I’m reading someone else’s poems with pure awe n no resentment that they can cough their
phlegm on the page n the spit splatters form words in a way that makes sense
My blood is the same temperature as the wind that cradles my breast

Today, I don’t mind that they exist
That there’s no 9 o’clock shadow crawling up my cheek
No spider kisses for my lover
That I forget I don’t have
For the first time, I’m not trying to write a poem to be perfect
Because I know I am

I don’t mind the grass stains on my jeans
or that they’re tight from the extra 15
I don’t resent the way the sun amplifies through my glasses like they’re readying to turn ants to ash
or that I can see my reflection in my laptop screen
I don’t mind that I see my father’s nose n grandma’s eyes
but can’t see any of my Bunica
I forget I’m in the part of the country with no wild geraniums
or honeysuckles
Because when I make angels in verdant grass
dye my fingers a lush green n brown
I swear I can smell them
underneath the sultry scent of summer
(viscid rainbow icee chins
bounding for the jingle
sweltering tar n cigarette butts
salt n pepper pavement
cool in ur nose but hot on ur skin)
that I wish I could worship
because it covers up the smell of vinegar—that’s something they don’t tell you about gaining weight
I don’t think you could find me blind anymore
Do you remember
jump rope dandelion chains
wild raspberries in central park
crabapples in riverside
goats in the summer
raccoons in the winter
Are the ghosts in my closet
the same as yours?
Do you wish you’d never left
the only place where you’re too busy to forget the world is melting
Where you watch the ants march n don’t envy their simplicity
n single-mindedness?
Do you remember fishing in turtle pond
n only catching that one goldfish
again n again
Until its body rotted
n it looked more carrion than catch
Do you remember fairy watching in the rain
until our clothes were soaked through
because the pixies needed the respite more
or
Getting thrown into Lasker
until we could do the dead man’s float
without floaties

The tree’s fingers choke the sunlight n a kid scooters past n I see myself 15 years ago on my pink barbie
scooter in bright orange bike shorts
luminous, unabashed
frivolously ebullient
Skin my knee n still
I go on

Scooter skids into shadows
the very same that grip my figure so tightly
a tube of toothpaste about to erupt
turn my head n see ur teeth
know they’re forming a smile
cause u usually catch a glimpse
of my daydreams

c'mon
let’s get ice cream
watch it melt on our hands

hey
i wanna see you bite
the eyes off
the spongebob popsicle
please?

Sophie (they/them) is a Religion Major at Barnard, focusing on the intersection of Religion and Social Justice movements in America and liberation theology. They once were ranked 500th in the world at competitive Tetris and are an avid Dungeon Master. In their free time they draw, read, write, badly play guitar, collect records, take black and white photos, and make linocut prints.

Nightfall in a Motel by Ashley Yung

August 10, 2023 Columbia Quarto

In the convention of a Medieval Welsh poem.

Through valleys, thrive ghosts idly,
Jest fiddles justifiably,

Dens, logs and heated delight,
Snails grating against sunlight,

Stolen breath veils standing brave,
Now recant, clavicles newly concave,

Shudders hard—wished shadow,
Footfalls trepid, faults fill Bordeaux.

Dream Thief by Natalie DiFusco

April 19, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Content warnings: death, blood

To write down your dreams,
to translate them from mind to paper
is to steal
and I am a dream thief

I.
Fresh, drenched bodies
scattered among the living
on a long flatbed truck
extending beyond the honeyed Pennsylvanian hills

Some kind of mass drowning accident
and yet,
the silent are the dead:
an old man with a bloody nose
dims next to distant carnival rides
a young girl—blonde, hopeful—five miles from home
and I know she will never get there

You call me on my hot pink landline,
saying: I knew you’d want to hear this story
and I am the Ferris wheel
I am the hills
I am the burning, moldy lungs
and the fresh, drenched bodies will always leave a stain

II.
In late September my dead stepgrandfather but not by marriage though closer to me than my blood-related grandfather—did you know that the Merriam-Webster dictionary doesn’t have an entry for stepgrandfather?—is in front of me in a blue hospital gown in a blue hospital bed with cold, blue hands which caress my own he asks me to get him something but I'm having trouble hearing him “Sorry, what are you saying?” All smiles his touch turns coarse I smile back I’m holding on for dear life or dear death perhaps he doesn’t repeat himself again but I am more willing than someone who is willing less “Sorry, one more time?” His request slips with him he is turning to tiny grains of sand my hand is becoming dry and ashy this is ash not sand isn’t it “Do you need something still?” I’m talking to the black my grandmother moves cross-country and I remember that I forgot to say goodbye to him because I didn’t know that he was really dying but do you think he’ll forgive me for forgetting or for laughing during his wake because I didn’t know what else to do with my mouth?

III.
I sip into my whisky glass filled with Diet Coke
in the bathroom of a fancy Polish restaurant
and I laugh at my ugly twin in the mirror
it’s 2007 and a tornado has just hit Enterprise, Alabama

I’m not supposed to be here
my teeth are not supposed to sink into this soft, fleshy glass,
coating my tongue with sweet shards
but I am here, lone and dry-mouthed
500 miles away, wind speeds reach 170 miles per hour

Two women enter suddenly,
clad in flamingo feathers and mollusk shells
mumbling wrkótce, wrkótce
and I notice the pulsing blue light of the walls
in the next 30 minutes, nine lives will be erased by hot air and debris

The strangers’ slender fingers reach for my mouth,
harvesting my soda-tinted splinters
to carve, silently, into their bare earlobes
but when their red begins to drip,
there is nowhere for it to fall
in two days, President George W. Bush will view the resulting debris in a Marine Corps aircraft

I wonder if tornadoes know the truth of their destructive nature,
like how I wonder if I knew the truth of mine
when I was seven and knocked out my brother’s friend’s tooth with a plastic lightsaber
when stripped, am I any different from a temperamental high-speed air column?

I am now floating, alone again
four hundred and sixty meters stretch out before me
about half a mile below my feet, sweet Southern grass sighs
and a single pink feather explores its new surroundings like a hound
I serve death and obliteration and owe the city of Enterprise, Alabama $307 million

Natalie (she/her) is a sophomore at Barnard studying English and French. She’s from Long Island and can usually be found among the trees in Riverside Park, listening to music. You can find her on Instagram @nataliedifusco.

View from Here by Hanna Dobroszycki

March 31, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Quarto 2022 Chapbook Contest Runner-Up

Click on the image below to read a PDF version of Hanna’s chapbook.

Artist’s Statement

‘VIEW FROM HERE’ is the first draft of an ongoing project. It was written between NYC and Berlin.

Artist Bio

Hanna Dobroszycki (b. 2001, NYC) is a multi-media poet/artist. They major in English with a creative writing concentration at Barnard College.

Bones by Phoebe Mulder

March 27, 2023 Columbia Quarto

Well I heard some people
were made from stars. My mother
liked the hopeful songs. She drank
the sparkly wine and spun
my body round the living room
and how was I supposed to think
of bones when we were planets, in orbit?

I still remember when I bit
the concrete, asphaltish outside
the bus stop. Bloodletting, baby knees
are bloodier, I think. Sweeter, the whole
noon smelled of cherries, but I couldn’t
see the bones. So I didn’t think of bones,
because I was fruit, spilling juice
into a Powerpuff bandaid.

By the time I was a dogbone
on a boy’s front stoop, I knew about ribs.
I chewed myself, the slobber. I looked
like a stranger's bedspread and almost
meant it when I told my best friend
it’s a funny story. Well dogbones don’t
belong on stage. His stoop was a margin,
and by then. I knew it was a slatted rib, too.

Phoebe Mulder (she/her) is a first-year at Barnard College studying English, but please don't hold her to that. She loves postcards and snow in theory.

Requiem by Lida

March 23, 2023 Columbia Quarto

someone has died
it rumbles through the train tracks
on gravel's broken side
and
the caterpillars know it
they spin into white coffins
above the march of ants
with their hoisted rice shrouds

soon they will find the brass of your tongue
the bells of lungs
where beethoven lodged his 51st
and find snippets of sonatas trapped
in intestines and pancreas
in the treble cleft of her chest

and maybe
between the toes
in the frail cap of her knees
the crust and leaves will bleed
her songs

for even swallowed
by Earth’s green lips
she rests
a larynx
to sing God
to sleep

Lida (BC'23 she/her/hers) is a Psychology and Education major from Houston, Texas. Writing poetry is a way for her to connect with her Iranian culture and explore new creative boundaries in both Persian and English.

Ducks by Phoebe Mulder

March 10, 2023 Columbia Quarto

I remembered to empty
the toaster crumb tray
yesterday, and when my brother
washed the dishes I felt as if
the kitchen was coming together.
And the mugs shone planetary
across the evening room, it’s the
evening light, I swear, it’s primordial.

My favorite story
is the bridge-split lake, how the boats
meet each other in the middle, how the
stomach swells and dips when fish die.
From the kitchen window,
the story is hardly poster-sized,
hardly enough
to simmer in a heavy pen,
though the bridge is a fell swoop,
the smooth cull of ink across
a vacant paper body. I remembered
to empty the toaster crumb tray
if only to feed the ducks
the bits, they fall in line,
the feathers scroll and scroll and scroll
and this is how I burnt my knees,
the deck-ish concrete, offering
as water weaved lace against
the heart of my toaster ducks.

Maybe this is my favorite story,
how the kitchen is a stomach
turned inside out, how the family
digs and digs without meaning
to give, and yet it’s all steaming, laid
yolk-like on the basin of a plastic plate,
and from the cliffy dockside
the boats nod and nod and bow
below the bridge, the ducks, the belt
bellows some song I can’t help
but overhear, and when water licks
the shore it is the soapy curl
of my brother’s wrist, above the sink.

Phoebe Mulder (she/her) is a first-year at Barnard College studying English, but please don't hold her to that. She loves postcards and snow in theory.

Of Death and Honey by Lida

March 6, 2023 Columbia Quarto

baba
I thought your death
easy
your voice rising
like an ancient cypress tree
eighteen centimeters a day
towards our friday God
eager to pluck you
for His April buffet

and though you protested
through the log of lungs
the brick of ribs
that the wooden tips of your fingers
would not burn
within a spring night
you were so gentle
in your surrender
that your cries
would not disturb
a sleeping angel

and here
I tremble
that I will lack your grace
my last hour
gritted and gnarled
robed in rage and stinking
of sour lament
unworthy of being called
your daughter

O Azrael:

embrace me
with your living spirit
and pour your fiery mercy
over me

may my end be of
his same lattice of pearls
white calluses of courage
rattling within the heart of a tulip

the saga of my final sigh rising
past the calm incense of my tongue
the cool smoke of teeth
until it is sweeter
than the echo of honey
on the breath of
a hummingbird

Lida (BC'23 she/her/hers) is a psychology and education major from Houston, Texas. Writing poetry is a way for her to connect with her Iranian culture and explore new creative boundaries in both Persian and English.

The Pearl Tree by Lida

February 24, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

She asks if I remember them—I remember
few, I say. Leaning deep into leaves,
my aunt pinched and turned white berries
from the pearl tree in hands as old and twisted
as the branches. She rushed to where I waited,
uncurled her palm and tossed them, rolling
into linen spread of my lap. She squeezed
my fingers into hers and pushed the silver point
through each fruit, tugging on the thread
until my palms were wet with juice.

I feel the grip and weight of a white necklace
soft and warm in the curve of my neck. I return
to the garden, alive again with yellow flowers
and the fresh scent of cucumbers. I am tall
enough now, but she holds my fingers back
and thrusts her own arthritic hand in leaves,
her mind fixed on a memory. One wet finger
unfolds and reveals a palmful of pearls.
She asks if I remember her.

Lida (BC'23 she/her/hers) is a Psychology and Education major from Houston, Texas. Writing poetry is a way for her to connect with Iranian culture and explore new creative boundaries.

Temporarily Closed by Jane McBride

February 21, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

Jane McBride (she/her/hers) is a senior at Columbia studying Creative Writing and Religion. As a general rule, she does not particularly care for bios.

weather event by Sam Losee

February 14, 2023 Columbia Quarto

This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.

an hour in, the snow is eating all the light
and Jules calls me from the national cathedral.
a sibling summoned, I forget my good layers,
remaining easily soakable in cloudbreath.
I happy my numb feet. like a knight, or a rabbit,
I wiggle through the gate towards someone warm.
delight and danger beg for my red breath.
private under thick flakes, paths are becoming questions:
why are you walking ? so funny you little ? wet creature ?
with your bright squishy face ? where do you think
you're going ? you're going towards the amphitheater ?
Jules says on the phone ? and here's ? where the ground
starts breathing slowly ? me and a squirrel
unempty the stairs ? I found you says Jules
and I zip their coat back up do the trees
always look like this ? kaleidoscopic ? just two arms above
the horizon ? let's keep going says Jules let’s
watch all the stoplights turn the snow green and walk
where the cars used to be in this newborn place
between ebbing homes and fingers of sky

Sam Losee (they/she) is a poet, flower farmer, and Adventure Time enjoyer from the Hudson Valley, NY. After they graduate in May, they plan to finish knitting their first pair of gloves.

Wanderer by Lida

February 13, 2023 Columbia Quarto

If you return from the distant seas
to the isle of my solitude
I will break the clock and the compass
before your feet
and burn your wet boat
on the wood of its oars.

You, half woman, half fish
your glittering eyes
revive in my mind
the memory of rainsoaked grass in July
You make me think
that love is something as sublime as a star
in the years before astronomy.

akin to a memorial by Eris Sker

February 2, 2023 Columbia Quarto

i shall be a silent hallucination.
- mikhail bulgakov, the master and margarita

seven of spades:
some muse opens like a moth’s wing
& glancing through the windows of its unsuspecting neighbours
freezes in recollection:

tuesday after july fourth
it’s blue night season:
the whole world comes unspooled each time I mention
cherry coke & birthdays & tequila
& why I cried on chewed-up pavement with an audience of lovers.
& why new york (new york!) is echoing with visions
while I’m torpedoing a phone call in vienna,
discovering nostalgia wine by fountains in the shade
another heated day on parkways in hallucination of the adriatic
that laps shores with hungry tongues, all wet and ready for a bout of plastic sick.
vienna where the churches baptize me with hecatombs & rosaries & incense
& you hold me through the Albertine Monets
the first day, the day after it & every night.
oh! the glory of your hands
passing through riverbanks
chasing off the stink of time and bobcats and ejaculation
while I write thin odes for the leaking freezers
firing drops like snow in august.
like words shot out in golden houses, seven at a time
like guilt huddled in my chest for each cruel moment
launched your way in rome when sun slick love
bled in the attic, still perpetually in awe.

eris sker (she/they) is a senior at columbia college studying comparative literature & society. they like moon jellies and peonies.