For Who Spring Is No Laughing Matter

← v21n1, Spring 2022

but the antiseptic to the wound

ashen and forsaken, bathing in the blazing

optimism of forsythia,

the gentleness of magnolia as if all

your past lovers are finding you to say

there is nothing to forgive.

When we emerge from the fear

that has kept us indoors

and hungry for touch

and click click clicking online,

we will be so busy

fucking every other cicada

we will make postcards

of our old skins,

hang them on the bumpers

of parked cars and patio armrests,

the sidewalk noisy

with all we have ripped off

to bare our new, pale skin.

nature desire time

Arhm Choi Wild

Arhm Choi Wild is the author of Cut to Bloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2020), which won the 2019 Write Bloody Prize. Their work has appeared in Barrow Street , The Massachusetts Review , Pleiades , Split this Rock , and elsewhere. They are the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. They were a finalist for the 2020 Poetic Excellence Prize from Button Poetry. They earned an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. They work as the director of the progressive teaching institute, and diversity coordinator at a school in New York City. Photo by Sarah Phillips