DeMisty Bellinger is the rarest of writers: the poet-novelist. She edits poetry at Malarkey Books and Porcupine Literary, but she’s also known for her incredible prose. (Despite what you read later in
doesn’t know how to give a PROPER blowjob
The spittle
of the sea
otherwise known as Jamaica Pond
dries hard on her eros:erring:elbow still deeper
resonating
in her
At three months shy of 36—one year past my baby deadline—I was nowhere near finding someone lasting
I don’t respond and two hours later he sends a photo of the dog.
Wary, ever vigilant, we peered into the berries for the blind white cursor blinking in an ecstasy of juice, carving invisible holes from the inside out.
Alice sighs in the way only British people can sigh. Maybe it’s all the rain they have inhaled.
We went back and forth, hyping each other up, talking about the best summer of our lives and how we would never be this young again and if we pet an alpaca everyone would be jealous.
Wind, always strongest by water, whistles and whooshes, knocks a girl off her feet.
I am searching for the type of room that would change my life if I lived there, you know the one.
“Bandeau,” I type into the Tumblr search bar. The results load like a quilt of skin.
Jordan lit a post-coital cigarette and contemplatively stared at the ceiling.
“My ex was a Nazi,” he said.
“What?”
The room smelled like milk and sweat. I only got up for a few reasons; to crack a window, to change a diaper, to eat, and occasionally, to go for a walk.
I'm waiting for influenza in Virginia. Or the taste of something metal.
Tracey, what am I meant to do with all this shit?
Party snacks
platters of them
orange and puffed up
Moloko rasping from a corner
there’s an awareness of space, of bug spray
You know what’s sad? When no one releases your sex tape.
And then there is the question of motherhood. And how it does or doesn’t fit into the feminist narrative, into our ideas of ourselves as liberated women.
Girls with blue hands
I
Psychopathology
in the woods
Naked snow
Cold, bare thighs
keep the snow white.
Tie around a tree
Hide your ruby
ring in the dirt
Rub your hair
against the
If we accept the conventional ATF line, bootleggers are scoundrels of the worst sort, caring only for the almighty dollar, men who will poison you with hootch run through junk radiators and contaminated with everything from antifreeze to dead rats.
Find your mark. As American as they come. Like this couple, standing a few feet to your left. Around your age, but taller, sturdier, sun-fed and muscular. Their smiles remind you of neatly racked milk bottles.
Why Everything Is Everything
for my daughter
Because earth is spinning
and spinning and circles
a yellow star. Because
gases burning, flaring
above the poles we spin
Dear Jane,
The TikTok girls are mad at you.
BIG TIME
okay i’ll be doing my best to explain myself, to say i did the best i could with what i
had and you did the same my mom will be bringing home ice cream soon
she
It was during the seventh experiment that I died, or I think I died—I mean, I must have died because if I hadn’t there surely would have been a lawsuit of some sort, and I’d know about it by now if I hadn’t died. Maybe I’d be filthy rich and wouldn’t have to keep signing up for these research studies and tests just to pay my bills. And to buy my pills.
The man who used to be my husband wanted to hook up. “Right here,” he said after parking our Nissan Sable in the road we used to live on and killing the headlights
I stared at the other campers, who stared into the center, screaming through their disbelief at what they were screaming.
So I wanted to bang this exvangelical guy and it's about to get worse:
