P.S.: Pain, Snapshots Hybrid by Audrey T. Carroll
“This is inspired by my own experience with chronic pain.”
Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Instagram: @AudreyTCarroll & X: @AudreyTCarroll http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com
Beatrice’s Purgatory Poetry by Katrina Moinet
[how] very dangerous to live even one day —Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
My ovaries won’t let me sleep they have something to say about the company I keep in this bright noon of day.
My ovaries shake me awake cause me to wander halls searching silent empty-nest aches as no bright damned spot calls.
My ovaries, rash bedfellows can’t stand the heat. Snatch back lost nights, tossed in aged-soaked bedclothes lucid pearl-warm patches.
My ovaries abandon ship slack deserter ball-sacks can’t pull my hormones together reality unwraps.
Such vagaries hush my insides– shopping-trolley artful mind downgraded to survival: more brain-dead than heartless.
My ovaries, feminine stock strange legacies; what’s left flows, as slowed heart murmurs rock bereft extremities.
My dark-web matter crystalized reminds me change is good: rage blooms at defeat, roses burn brightest the day they die.
Katrina Moinet (she/they) is published in Mslexia, Firmament, Ffosfforws, Nation.Cymru, and The Poetry Marathon. They won Globe Soup 2021 Short Story prize. Katrina hosts Blue Sky open-mic night & co-runs theGwyl Môn Writing Festival. Their debut pamphlet is forthcoming with Hedgehog Press. X: @KMoinetwrites Instagram: @KMoinetwrites https://katrinamoinet.com/