Happy birthday, Kailey Tedesco! Celebrate by reading these poems we published May 16, 2019!

this old house as something still blooming

such dust — these dandelion seeds orb 

my vision cobwebbed. optometrists say

if i see lightning or spiders or anything haunted

my retina will tear & i may lose sight 

instantly	 for now it is loose sight

i say to myself; it is nothing;			nothingsight

a ghost story in itself  		let me tell you

about my favorite genres	as a child 

my pet newts became loofas

& i worried i did it to them 

with my asthma 	like the airlack of me 

covered their small bodies 	in enough filia 

for them to float	 	even in their lake-burial		i’d like to be buried

in the lake, too;		i’d like for my grave 

to be a lost & found;	i’d like my grave to be a dollhouse

replica 		of this memoryhaus	i’m building

from scratch	how many death wishes can i have

while still fearing death		anyways, genres

i love horror	 & that’s why i want you

to put me in the walls	let me lose sight 

for lack of anything to see	just dark 

just some campy print		of purple lemurs 

mixed with holly berries	

i’ve only been told i’m going to hell once

but many times purgatory	i take back my baptism 

anyways 	let me go where i’d like 



this old house as gushblood

everyone clowns ;;;

wide-lipped, a cyst on me
not mine bursts blood unmenstrual  

no mooning whatsoever, 
no miming, no teardrop

open mouth with no sound 
i hope to ghost in this way,

curve my breaths 

loved-one shaped, become something 
i’m not 

the first house of my life, my father
clowned in conehead

my mother clowned 
graveyard shift 

i clowned downward
toward the carpet

with dog, clowning 
thirst 

everything bleeds out 
over time & i’m here to

stop it ;;;

i cauterize where possible 
not with fire, but legend

then ritual 

where there is house 
there is a sort of god 

the second house of my life 
held real clown 

birthdays & teeth stained
from milk meals, past age 

i’m milkstain & woman 
thanks to the gushblood

i live in castle turrets made
of candle wax 

they say she witches, she claws, 
she cauls, she clowns

ring the doorbell ;;;


you’ll drown 



this old house as an afterlife for something
 

with its single cathedral window we build

our chapel of cardboard. the dirt floor murder- 

traces the length of me & there next to me

last year’s easter palms retching with dust.  

remember the animal on the roadside, 

so rotted; a new species of beast. we gathered

for its funeral, three of us, & we grave-marked

with remains of china spewing the lawn. 

ticks & cabbage roses both corkscrew

from flatware & carcass in search 

of living hosts, tongues ready-wet 

with the memory of blood. our flower 

crowns ached unto us with false 

prophecies, made my head spin

to glass, gouged & wounded. death delivers me 

callouses & hangnails, blooming dewclaws

all down my achilles. much later, 

we knew it was a possum that we buried, 

perhaps the queen of them & we wondered 

how the earth must starve itself gagwards 

when fed the arms and legs of its own milk.



mother
	

under your cheek it’s all blood & i see it. by the lake so dry, you cart me 
through the forest in nursery rhyme. tonight i am either 

precious zirconia or go far from here else find my heart 
pieces, boxed. childhood friend 

of mine, i take you to the abandoned campers full of golden 
junk we love with every carotid artery in our one-day 

bodies. you’re-not-my-real-mom beats me upside the matted 
curls with a tooth-comb. for the umpteenth time, fear 

not – mayday is soon & the dancers surely will spike 
my cranium with ribbon. anxiety is all mine through 

hereditary trauma. now my very heartbeat is the name bloody
mary & my very corneal tear is a mirror with glass shatter 

to the hundredth decimal point. the wrong time portal has me 
sutured to its under-belly & this is not the natal chart

i came with. tuck me into the beautiful gross of my own
leg bruised against the bath ledge, purpling bed of lilies 

spirographed. once i’ll live in a future corpse, rotted to a pile 
of improperly laundered delicates. that’s right; i’m made 

of lace & that night on the cart you storied me about ghosts so hard
they black-magicked my retinal cavities. bow down bones 

of you; i am an afterlife for at least one small thing. unmothering 
as an attempt at good works is what you should call it 

when you speculum your mouth & all kinds 
of new genus roses fall out. 



walpurgisnacht

this state of wet pennies	mossbeds my footpads	i wishing well myself 
through it 		ward off you 		behold dead relics

i lit my candles in the evening 	already		it is time to hail 
grandmothers’s green lady		the painting 		of self 

in mossshade	 & framed	she says	i was not thinking of ending my life
just leaving the kitchen		just sleeping alone 

in the moss	staining my skin the same shade of green as this paint
& everyone balked	& everyone swarmed		& everyone sang

secretly as i did 	nothing	is secret 	i like to sleep
woodtucked, too		in need of bloodwork	    but it autocorrects 

to bloodworm 		& so it shall be		& so it is
my veins oozing with pest	i lament not becoming

the witch sooner 	i’m collected on the germanic hill 
a rag doll heap		a real pile	of doze 

we chant 	until our mouths seep		& our mouths drool 
& our mouths fill with silk fans	from some parlor 

of our pastlife		just so 		our mouths become dusty	articulate
pastilles	out come the moths		out come the rats

out come the oil lamps	hung swinging from our teeth
they’ve hollowed us out	made waxdolls		grandma’s 

still sleeping by mirror lake	clutching rosary	can you imagine
a lake of mirrors		i’ve always hoped 	the bathroom vanity 

would pry for me	wet with its tongues		& in i’d drop		
& there, 	there 		i’d be