From sam sax:

there are many words for transformation / metamorphosis
metaphor / medication / go to sleep / beside the man you love
wake up next to a dog / maybe the moon brought it out of him
hound hungry for blood / maybe it’s your fault / or maybe
it was there inside him / howling all along

– Bestiary

From Nikki Giovanni:

she tried to be a book
but he wouldn’t read

she turned herself into a bulb
but he wouldn’t let her grow

she decided to become
a woman
and though he still refused
to be a man
she decided it was all
right

– W O M A N 

From Erika L. Sánchez:

am I asking to be spared
or am I asking to be spread your body
smelled like cathedrals and I kept
your photo in a bottle of mezcal
semen-salt wolf’s teeth you should have
touched my eyes until they blistered

–Saudade, found on Rattle

From Carmen Giménez Smith:

I was light from the mouth from every part of me
I was of the earth or a scar in the earth rent through
the ruins of late civilization and bubbled from it and
became a saint’s reptilian spirit and I could taste
the wheat and coal and gold like a trinity of bounty
and I was vapor like a smog that becomes a wraith
over the city then back to its animal form decompressed
and atomized into its past life as star and I was that animal
truth
– “Post-Identity”, found on Rattle

From Aimee Nezhukumatathil

When I hear your name I can’t forget

how your long torso pressed against my bare back,

bluish in this early light. Your fingers shot into me, popped

my spine into a wicked arch. There is no lack

of how it haunts me still—what I bid—lost, sacked

and wrapped for other girls. I should have looked up

to see who else was bidding, but I studied the folds in your jacket.

My limit is spent, loud and certain as the auctioneer’s racket.

– From After the Auction, I Bid You Good-Bye

From Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Are All The Break-ups in Your Poems Real?

If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuck

in your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,

the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—

then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,

bit, and bite.

– From “Are All the Break-ups in Your Poems Real?”

From Robin Robertson:

meet me

where the sun goes down

meet me

in the cave, under the battleground

meet me

on the broken branch

meet me

in the shade, below the avalanche

meet me

under the witch’s spell

meet me

tonight, in the wishing well

meet me

on the famine lawn

meet me

in the eye of the firestorm

– “Trysts”, from Sailing the Forest