Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Sydney Vogl
—
IN OCTOBER, THE CITY LOOKS PRETTIER
and i become more and more undrowned. this is the month my hands
alive themselves and i find new strands of gray. this is the month
a girl you’ve never met teaches me about dying. how the lemon tree,
if it manages to avoid starvation and disease, will eventually succumb
to overabundance, exorcizing a scream of yellow until its limbs
snap under the weight of the fruit. my dad used to say too much
of anything will kill you and i still don't know what my body looks like
when i let it want out loud. i avoid the market on 5th and the beach
where we used to drink wine straight from the bottle. this city shrank
when you left but somehow, there is so much more room. this is the month
where i unlearn how to sleep next to droughts, this is the month i turn gluttonous,
spread my toes into the dirt. i eat honey by the spoonful and sleep until the sun
wakes me. i meet friends for dinner and order heaping bowls of warm noodles.
i walk the long way home. i buy a down comforter that i can’t afford to teach
my skin softness. how marvelous, to survive too much of everything
until you get to die on your own accord. to leave the world with so much
of yourself, it quenches the thirst of everyone you love.
Sydney Vogl is a queer poet from The Bay. She previously won the Cow Creek Chapbook Prize for her chapbook, CRYBABY! (February 2023, Emerald City Press). In 2021, she won the Jane Underwood Poetry prize and the AWP Intros Journal Award. Her work has been published in Ironhorse Review, Tusculum Review, and more.
