I.

LET THERE BE HESTER

what the fuck hester let’s kill our authors I love you centuries away won’t you let me I’ll be your
cathartic underdog you with your raunchier than thou attitude O come to my island O island let us
seduce each other let the flowers breath and take let’s become surge and virus let’s trip the main and
shut it down O lucky the scaffold etched by your weight I glow for you and to think I always have
where I’m marking your box on all my applications I am citizen of your fiction & that’s where I will
live with your static layered on my static we emit mineral and singing make a tapestry of our static we
will emit our glory & punishment all definition
                                                                                       — no name

II.

O!

O
hester I love you you angelic slut
together imagine how weighty our collective & bombed organs

what the heck hester
what moons were our youth together?
are we animal enough to be witnessed?
like me, my fantasy body
embroidered & elliptically dug into dirt’s castration

what a bummer hester
born perforated and they punish our rips
this is my tantrum. be quiet with me
and descriptive

what a let down hester
this discipline is the least precise thing I know—
no mistaken sun to testify
no rights to sign away

but hester a gazillion times
I stand for you. I would & I do—
and I would too

Rosie Stockton is a poet based in Los Angeles. Their first book, Permanent Volta, is the recipient of the 2019 Sawtooth Prize, and is forthcoming from Ahsahta Press in 2020. They recently received their MA in Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University. Their poems have also been published by Publication Studio, Monster House Press, BigBig Wednesday, Flint Magazine, A Plume Journal, and WONDER.