I Keep Thinking About How Rfk Said That Autistic People "will Never Write A Poem." I Keep Thinking About

the trolley problem vs. systemic oppression: a comic.

online communities are so strange because people slip away so easily. you can be on here for years, folding people you've never met into the fabric of your daily life, and then they disappear, leaving only ghost posts scattered across tumblr behind. or their blog stays dormant, for weeks, months, years, until you're only still following them because you remember that they love sunflowers or they were kind to you when they didn't have to be or the last thing they posted was sad and raw and you still worry about them sometimes.

and sometimes they come back when you least expect it, years later, even, and there's this sudden rush of relief like there you are, there you are, even though you barely knew each other.

there's a strange kind of love to it. i don't know you and i want to hold your hand across miles and time zones and oceans. i can still see the imprint of you in this community you left. you don't anyone will notice or care when you're gone, but we notice and we care and we wish you well.

i hope you're all okay out there. i hope the sun is shining on your face and you are breathing deeply. i miss you.

#1,484

I picked up

one of those perfect published

poetry anthologies

flipping through its pages

fumbling for this authors sense of style

tripping headfirst into the phrase

“if writing would kill you, would you still write?”

my joints crack on impact

god there are weeks

when i can’t even dream

of pen and paper’s sordid affairs

but there are moments upon moments

where it’s the only impulse

I have left

i may never achieve

that coveted haven

on a barnes and nobles

new releases shelf

but god damn

i

will

write

until

i

die

or

i

cease

to

be

complete

you spent hours in libraries and in art supply stores trying to absorb the artist tips from books your parents didn't want to buy you. on each page of every "how to draw" is a version of the same four things: this is how you shade a sphere. this is how you shade a cone.

this is what a man looks like. he is hard and angular and jutting. his chest narrows a triangle down to his sharp hip and long legs. his jawbone is a square. he is powerful, imposing, his hands are big and meaty. he is a leader.

this is what a woman looks like. she is soft and her hands tuck her long hair back behind a delicate ear. she is big-eyed and round (but not too round, she is skinny, here is the faint sketch of her abs showing), she is smaller and lighter and pretty. she has thick black lashes and her tits do not come with a massive ribcage to offset the weight we put on her - she has curves, but they are impossibly slim without giving her backache trouble. there is a large red hourglass outlined on top of her figure, the way there is a triangle outlined on top of the man. her face is a heart-shape, and her lips are pouting.

here is how you draw the woman and the man together. the man should be in action shots. the woman's ass should be in action shots. she should fit against the man to compliment his negative space - she should slot into his shadow so when they hug, they become one uniform space. here is how all the other artists have done it, see how good it looks when the man (angles, fire, passion, action) and the woman (roundness, water, emotion, supplication) complement each other? he begins the sentence, she is his ending.

do you want to kiss another girl? that is round-to-round. that is fitting the wire into the wrong socket! how would the faces look together? a single silhouette you sketch and then hide, scribbling over it.

do you want to look like a girl? by sheer genetic happenstance, you absolutely don't look like that, and you never have. you don't look like a man, either, though, do you. you don't feel like you truly belong to either gender, but there is not a "neutral/fluid" drawing in the book. there is male (triangle) or female (hourglass).

but you have a square jaw and square hands and "masculine" proportions. but you have curves and roundness and full lips and "feminine" features. someone online says, definitively, that any form of gender noncompliance is "a mental illness." this comment has over one thousand likes from people who agree.

here is how you shade a square. none of the clothes at the store look good on you, you always somehow feel like you're wearing a weird kind of costume. here is how you shade a sphere. your friend's mother calls the school because she's horrified you're in the same changing room. here is the neutral body figure: it is a wooden man. technically the wooden man is genderless, but that is because masculinity is the default, and everyone calls the figure "a wooden man." you must be small and posable and skinny and featureless, then you can be masculine enough to not have gender.

here is how to draw a person. begin with some shapes. choose the right shapes to get that person's gender correct. do not kiss her. shade in short, sharp lines.

when she laughs, look away.

“and the universe said…”

#1,200 hermit

when i leave this tight fit of an exoskeleton

i wonder what will be found from those times

when something was lost to the tide

rather than gathered and disposed of

there are some things

you just cannot rid the world of

corn cob husks

used-up push-pop tabs

empty of disinfection tablets

all the library books i could never return

paperbacks so worn down

with indentations and water damage

you can barely decipher the original text

neon orange, made to eat

inside-out wrappers, forgotten sweets

saved for never, piano sheets

shucking

prying

always denying

hoarding away contrabands

collecting what’s left for the next finding in the sand-

but even hermit crabs

in their ever adapting, tenacious habits

leave behind something worth remembering

there's laundry to do and a genocide to stop by vinay krishnan

Bottlecap Press

It's Always This Beautiful, I Just Can't Always See It, by Codi Barbini

Prose poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features. In It’s Always This Beautiful, I Just Can’t Always See It, gratitude becomes a me

From Codi Barbini's chapbook, It's Always This Beautiful, I Just Can't Always See It, available from Bottlecap Press!

cry for the world / go on living this will end / it must be a fire / have hope