Live Nude Poems

Wax Cups The bridge over the Long Island Expressway was a jackdaw cutting through holiday traffic. a father flanked by young daughters, McDonald’s sodas in hand, bundled in winter coats, watched the cars below. The daughter to the left, her ponytail unfurling with flyaways at the temples— in middle school we called them “wings”— jumped, pointing at cars, as we slipped along underneath. They were 495 East sentinels celebrating a winter ritual. Years from now, with the snow falling sideways, they’d recall icy hands pressed against waxy cups, while the world sped under their feet— their dad in the center of it all. Museums exist, hovering over small towns, contained entirely in watching bodies. We tread well-traveled paths until we reach the bridges suspended above our childhood. “Remember?” the girl in the pink coat will ask her winged sister, and they’ll see times they didn’t know were sacred until much later. Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/he...

In response to a text that said what else could I have done?   I've wet bedsheets with blood from stagnated piercings; middle-of-the-night fugitive weight. Earlier I was a monster, with no action as my only other option. I didn't know how to yell no at the time or that giving gifts of puncture wounds in that moment would hurt worse than the lightning scrambling through my body raising the hair on my arms and neck. Later at night, existing outside myself, the storms subsided absorbed by the bed. I imagined the mattress as soil, and the blood as springtime sun showers; and maybe one day, somewhere else, potions of puncture wounds will feed others. And then, I will become a gardener growing again. Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/her) is a writer and editor living in Philadelphia. She is the editor of HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, and a former genre editor at Lunch Ticket. Jane-Rebecca is the author of Better Bones and Marrow, both published by Thirty West Publishing House,...