The formatting for this poem may break on small screens, so a PDF version is available.
suddenly everything leapt into continuous motion
the debunked tripartite brain your fearful shoulders
wing bones seizing, our bodies seed-
ing the soil of the pillowcase, in your sweatpants
pockets my shovel hands
leave me alone, I say
wriggling further down the bed
I am counting backwards from the end I am
circumnavigating the half moons of spit
on the sheets I am looking for the
tapped stash of Atarax / Lorazepam / Zopiclone
you sit upright again and gesture at your heart as if to say
here it is
in the game of which-of-these-photos
feature rabbits/streetlights/motorcycles/maps
we are being beaten like eggs into
stiff peaks whipped and hardly working
from a reduced capacity to discern
whose elbow is this whose rib which of us is
ceding, ceasing, throwing misleading shadows on
the wall locked in this even match we wrestle
yes we wrestle all night- Meet the Author
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griffin epstein (they/them) is a non-binary white settler/occupier from NYC (Lenape land) working in education and community-driven research in Toronto (Dish with One Spoon/ Treaty 13). They have been featured in Glad Day’s Emerging Writers Series, and their po- etry has appeared in CV2, Grain, The Maynard and Plenitude, among others. griffin is the author of the chapbook so we may be fed (Frog Hollow Press, 2021). They play music and develop experimental multimedia pieces with beloved collaborators.