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"BLOODTEETH" by Despy Boutris

11/27/2020

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Despy Boutris's writing has been published in Copper Nickel, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Currently, she serves as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Guest Editor for Palette Poetry and Frontier, and Editor-in-Chief of The West Review.

BLOODTEETH
​

I went blackberry-picking, looked down
at my index finger, & watched a wound bloom

with blood. To compare this plasma
to a flowering thing: amaryllis, orchid,

chrysanthemum. To memorize creases,
freckles, the sight of the thorn finding its way

into flesh. All day, the breeze burns
my ears, eyes blurring at the sight of sunlight

filtering through oak branches, that golden
color unbearable, the haze hard to believe

as fable. My mother organizes her top-drawer
& finds a box of my teeth. My mother

tells me love never lasts, a river dissolving
into a ravine with parched rocks. Nothing

left to drink. I call my father to say I dreamt
I swam the span of the Pacific, fled

from everything I know. He reminds me
my name is mythic—body built for saltwater,

memory spanning centuries, trident still stuck
in my spine. & what do we really have

to count on but the sea, water, the light
of the sun turning on the city? Hands

made stiff from the cold, distant smoke rising,
the scent of anise in the air.
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    ​Roya Marsh- for (insert name)
    ​Stephanie Kaylor- LONG DISTANCE
    Tongo Eisen Martin-
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    ​Despy Boutris- BLOODTEETH
    JinJin Xu- Days of Hourless Mothers
    ​Ashley M. Jones- Flour, Milk & Salt
    Sam Herschel Wein- How To Cook Your Family
    ​Marianne Chan- 2 poems
    Jason Crawford- PReP
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    Geramee Hensley- Redundancy Limit
    Dustin Pearson- My Brother Outside the House in Hell
    DT McCrea- On occasion of my own death
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    ​Linda Dove- Mid-Life with Teeth
    Stephen Furlong- I Don't Know About You, but Mostly I Just Want to be Held
    Dorothy Chan- Because You Fall Too Fast Too Hard
    ​Kevin Latimer- MIRAGE
    MJ- Let me be remembered as a mother
    Taylor Byas- Rooftop Monologue
    Matt Mitchell- FINE LINE TRIPTYCH
    ​Todd Dillard- Will
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    Donna Vorreyer- In The Encyclopedia of Human Gestures
    Conor Bracken- THE WORST THING YOU CAN DO TO A MAN
    Ben Purkert- 2 Poems
    Emma Bolden- What Women's Work Is
    ​Chelsea Dingman- Lockdown Drill
    Raych Jackson- Pantoum for Derrion Albert from the Plank
    Elliot Ping- in the eighth grade
    Devin Kelly- POEM FOR MY FRIEND MATT WHO AT THIS MOMENT IS RUNNING 300 MILES ACROSS TENNESSEE​
    Kwame Opoku-Duku-
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    D.A. Powell- Sneak
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  • Home
  • ABOUT
    • HISTORY
    • MASTHEAD
  • CONTENT
    • POETRY
    • PROSE
    • ARCHIVES
    • Music
    • COLUMNS >
      • TIMEFIGHTERS & UNBELIEVERS
      • unearthly horoscopes from your dreamy, vaguely occult ghost
      • Heartworms
      • Just Sucking
    • INTERVIEWS
    • REVIEWS
  • SUBMIT
  • CONTACT
  • SAD KIDS SUPERHERO COLLECTIVE
  • THE STARLIGHT ELSEWHERE READING
  • Flight School