[a literary magazine]
[ Issue #2 ]
[ The Writer ]
Emily Moon (she/her) is a queer transgender poet from Portland, Ore. She is author of "It’s Just You & Me, Miss Moon." She is host for the Eastside Poetry Workshop and Editor at First Matter Press. Her work most recently appears in Buckman Journal and Pile Press. Shes intrested in how words on the page can communicate in ways that cannot be reproduced when read aloud. You can find her on Instagram @emilymoonpoet and Facebook at Emily.Moon.57. Her link tree is linktr.ee/EmilyMoonPoet.
[ the poetry ]
Reading trans spring at The Secret Room in Portland, Ore.
anxiety party
anxiety shows up in dancing shoes brings
depression to the party depression is a crazy dude
who harangues me into believing anything that
goes wrong is my fault
anxiety's dance moves
mutate
social affairs into
thorny thickets
bewilder
coherent thought
if there's an escape route
i flee
otherwise
i hunker down
a boulder ____in a creek
subject
to currents of
are you ok
i think
no
i'm not fucking ok
i'm bleeding
from a thousand tiny punctures
i'm fine
i say
i'm fine
[ the notes ]
anxiety party is a report on my lived experience
with social anxiety.
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slumgullion
i learned to carry anguish because that
was the offering often received
from trailer parks and blue-collar suburbs
i inched upward to a branch
from which to cocoon rearranged my internals
into an ensemble that could fly
on the slightest updraft i floated
toward zenith when hurricanes
ripped through i learned to wrangle
fierce winds with other
audacious creatures of earth
fire was a teacher who taught me
to ride into the heart of heat
to transform heat into light
to let light consume me
until i became a brilliance
in the eye of day
slumgullion is a thin soup you make from the last limp carrot, that half onion that's kind of iffy, whatever leftovers are in the fridge, a half bag of frozen succotash, a potato, and salt and pepper. It will probably be the most delicious meal you've had all day.with social anxiety.
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trans spring
no transformation without trans
no transcendence without trans
no transmittance without trans
no transamerica without trans
no translucence without trans
no transference without trans
no transfusion without trans
no transaction without trans
no translation without trans
no transience without trans
no transpose without trans
no transistor without trans
no transpire without trans
no humanity without trans
we emerge in every generation
we enlarge the possibilities
of human existence
we will always be here
we are trans