The Shapeshifters
by Samantha Cooper
There was just a wetness in my throat, tomato vines setting sail
a door over. Air smelled like oil, liturgical and stiff in its dewy balm
and booger dangling a mosquito fossilized: yep, that’s what you get
for playing god
- that’s how the cat’s funeral fund took the shape of a yard sale. I waved
my arms and screamed at you, everything must go -
That shifting look you gave me, my cat’s one too. Depending on how far you’re looking,
and what angle, she’s my dad’s mother, a box freshly delivered, a mound
of tomato pasta, a shovel, a cross walk over the river Jordan - I stare at people when
I’m on my bike too, like I’m in a car - nope, you don’t have to squint:
remember? How children love to untie the knots in their mothers’ necklaces, how sliver
became a lattice of insulated numb impressed chain links in our fingerprints?
On, Eurydice! On, Edith! We spit each other’s oils out, as bitter as hiding a scoff, out into one hand. That’s it, Russian Roulette, you know; your chariot awaits. That’s how my mouth tasted,
vinegar when you were held shivering corn husks on Halloween in the crook of my arm. On the other hand, I stroke your neck with the grain. Yep. And there’s another
thing I’d like to say to you; your chariot awaits
Samantha Cooper is a trans girl novelist and poet from Chicago, Illinois. She reconstructs ugly, fragile mutant feelings, stands them upright on a flat surface, and watches them fight. Her work has been featured in orangepeel literary magazine.