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everywhere a hemorrhage of dread

— Khaled Mattawa, from "‘Alams for Sun on Shuttered Windows," Fugitive Atlas

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self-portraiture as wish, as howl for love that says love me this way, not as I was. as this.

— Daniel Sarah Karasik, from “rehearsal,” Plenitude

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“Tonight no moon / to break myself against.”

— — Jennifer Elise Foerster, from “Apricots,” Bright Raft in the Afterweather

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“I lie on my old spring bed, thinking about girls who slit their / wrists; who pour kerosene on their heads and light a match. / I’ll be thirteen soon.”

— — Sholeh Wolpé, from “This Coffin: Bead 1,” Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse

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“To own the word I, to sink / your teeth into its meat, how even its shape resembles a bone / to suck the pith of life from.”

— — Natalie Wee, from “Ten Years after Diagnosis,” Beast at Every Threshold

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“R is for road where we lay, / Sometime, because we wish not to exist / And wish and wish and wish. And must.”

— — Roger Reeves, from “The Alphabet, for Naima,” Best Barbarian

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“So few will want to lay down / and watch the world burn / from their bedroom.”

— — Warsan Shire, from “Bless Your Ugly Daughter,” Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

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19 & i have only now told my therapist my suicide plans from high school, how i mapped it out like like a skinned knee & knew for certain it would never heal over shut & for my birthday this year: antidepressants & the dread of “i was not meant to live this long” & no one in the house says my name unless forced, as if a robbery, as if inviting ghosts.

— Silas Melvin, from “Nineteen,” Grit

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       Another urban legend: animals will abandon offspring touched by human beings. This, too, has been disproven by wildlife experts, although it is easy to believe                                            our hands are capable of so much hurt.

— Natalie Wee, from “Ten Years after Diagnosis,” Beast at Every Threshold

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“you / wish you had the nerve to kiss / strangers or believe in love.”

— — Silas Melvin, from “Neurosis,” Grit

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Maybe I’ve been afraid to claim my body, afraid to be wild

                  and break   out into all this sky   around me

Perhaps I can burst

    through ceilings and glass, explode into joy?

— Marlanda Dekine, from “My Black, Rural, Queer Childhood,” Thresh & Hold

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the body as the punishment & therefore the punished, in a desperate animal riot ending in kitchen knives & throbbing remorse

— Silas Melvin, from “Punished Body,” Grit

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19 & always crying in front of professionals, asking to be healed but never taking the advice, showing them skinned knees & being given a sad, pinched look in return. 19 & sitting still in the sun light, skin broken, medicated, & unsure.

— Silas Melvin, from “Nineteen,” Grit

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When your pussy is made of volcanic glass, lipsharp and juice of the blackblue blood, oozed from the memories of your inbetweenthelegs magic, don’t-want-to-remember but must-not-forget recollections;

You buy a blade.

—  Jessica Helen Lopez, from “Obsidian Knife to Cut the Shit Out,” The Blood Poems

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Cut the lonely from your rib cage. Cut the shit. Let the juice of the black   blue veins drip from the old house you once called your body. And in that house, you will leave the lights on, let them burn for all passersby to witness the hallelujah of your glory.

—  Jessica Helen Lopez, from “Obsidian Knife to Cut the Shit Out,” The Blood Poems

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“I am my own conqueror. // Who said I needed you anyhow? / Who said I needed these words?”

— —  Jessica Helen Lopez, from “An Un-Love Poem for the Guy I Love,” The Blood Poems

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I cannot tell the woman from the wound. Both are so concerned with your safety they sit with you until you heal. And bleed and bleed and bleed.

— Akosua Afiriyie-Hwedie, from “In my version,” Born in a Second Language