after the interview in which timothée chalamet says he wept for hours after his audition for White Boy Rick
by Aly Pierce

a sprout starts from my pit
where I’ve been buried for weeks
thinking of him bent over, all elbows
& chest, fingertips to floor & leaky face,
the shape of someone else who finds faults
in all their skin, like my welts between my eyes,
at my hairline, the back of my skull, someone else
who knows I spent the morning capturing the shape
of my stomach & then sulking at it—how sunken is
the ship—how hours were the hours? I need to know
for science, for my spreadsheet of how I’m doing

I haven’t even heard an answer yet & I’ve already
molded my shoulders around my knees & given myself
to a new depth, think thank god the egg can’t opt out
because what would any of us be? I feel so close
to the part of him weeping, the part that fully digested
a rejection that required the un-hinging of the jaw.

DW087: Victims Killer
by Aly Pierce

Let it all be growth. Let’s not delude ourselves
into thinking there is such a thing as regression
like that moment in One Tree Hill where
the mechanic says “The prettier the girl, the dirtier
the car” or the opposite, I never know, the past knocks,
& yesterday while stamping records in a small room
my right arm flailed to catch my fall eight years
too late because a friend called the day before to ask
me if he’ll ever be okay again & I have to tell him, yeah.
Because I believe it even though my tits are spread
so wide by this bra & my dress is like a sheath,
I’m telling you I’m okay, I mean it when I say
there is no such thing as regression. I’m just
as much a slave to everything as I always
was & always will be, but my brain hasn’t
blinked open to gashes dripping down both my thighs
recently, & since you’re calling from a dark room
I can help.

I had no dreams the next night but
I did watch Y Tu Mama Tambien because like him
our freshman year is still sleeping around my neck, listen,
sometimes I’m dirty & sometimes I’m not, sometimes
my brain is full of bees, sometimes it clinks in chains,
sometimes I sleep like I’m inanimate, & sometimes I blink
all night & listen for the owls touching down on the front lawn
briefly, before taking flight again. Sometimes the spread between
my ring finger & thumb is too far & sometimes thirty seconds
is all I need & I’m okay again.

Aly Pierce lives in Beverly, MA where she drinks coffee & mails you records from Deathwish Inc. Her debut collection The Visible Planets will be out shortly from Game Over Books.