Current
Issue
Fall 2026 / Volume 13.1
Simeon Berry
—
Resistance #6: am i the sea or a sea monster that i should be guarded
“So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the holy place (let the reader understand),” –Matthew 24:15
𝄐
i was not
on the roof but prostrate
in my bed, not
in the field but laying
on the floor, not
in Judea but an airport
when the abomination of desolation
visited me
i became living carcass
slitwhisper judgment arrived
its auric pecking
piecemealed my insides
a choir of entanglement
keyed the divine instrument
of this, my body, broken
𝄐
slitwhispers
speak of
new worlds
new love get out
new possibilities
documentation needed
get out
demon
my thoughts are intercepted
before they rise – spliced
to fit their rhetoric
there is not enough help!
i can give them,
these split tongue whispers
𝄐
i get up from bed
and hit an invisible barrier
knocked out, vision red, my being
snake coiled
– lights out – i am
muttered into disappearance
in the dark i gum disaster
as stars fall, crossed
onto my shoulders as a tear –
here i am
on my knees
on a sidewalk
exiled outside the gated community
i bawl, cheek cement, and know
i am blood to be shed
𝄐
“This is why black girls kill themselves.”
when each step is whiplash
death assigned to their name?
how does Ammaarah know?
𝄐
The pieces I am
remind me despite
what I feel, despite
what we know,
there are girls with feet pointed
at the ready, shod
in hallelujah honeyed glory.
Girls cut off
at the knees, the waist
unable to find their place
in the midst of concrete
jungle embrace. Girls
who learn to wield
a different master’s tools.
One who knows the rules
and how to slither past the lock-chain
society that refuses to speak
their name
or a public who forces them
to take the blame
for what’s been wrecked inside
their holy frame. A public
who take what they can as they demand
them be the promise
d land, hold a nation
upon the bridge of their back
and stifle their need to attack.
Girls groomed to eat themselves
to hell/ to hell and back. Then
called Resilient, called Strong.
There are girls who resist. Girls who call themselves
prophetess, soot faced and sack clothed.
There are girls who take the mask off.
𝄐
When White Supremacy visited me
I was found wanting
another white man ensnared in my heart,
tearing me apart as worthless.
I visited him in my dreams. He said I
“tore the fabric of the universe” for closeness.
I tried to sterilize myself
to make him wanting.
Freed from the wilderness,
I became lost.
The loneliness beckoned
at great cost.
When it finally got me
I clung to divine purpose.
I yelled into the abyss.
I pissed on the floor.
Six shadows visited me.
The lightbulb popped.
I floated for a bit in the woods.
The devil left a mark on my heel.
I walked myself backwards into the closet.
The first voice in my head broke its silence.
I yelled and no one came.
I yelled and no one came.
I yelled and no one came.
𝄐
at the end
i found the stars
i found a leash
i did not run
i did not speak
an angel called me Sibyl
& i blinked becoming
𝄐
my skin a garden
my hair a halo
my heart an ocean
these girls
all the girls
I am and was
tenderly I tended
myself to sanity
I abandoned the god
of white washed tombs
I cleaned my room of its piss
I learned to hissss
this body, a dove.
Melissa Ferrer Civil (she/they) is a gnostic, first-gen, Haitian-Cuban, queer poet, organizer, and educator living on Kaw, Otoe, and Osage lands (Kansas City, MO). They are preoccupied with constructing new communication for the manifestation of a home we all hold in our hearts. Melissa has two chapbooks BIRTHING PAINS and STENO PAD (Turnsol Editions). Melissa received their MFA from Randolph College. They have been published in Plentitudes, Pleiades, voicemail poems and elsewhere. They are the Director of Political Education and Movement Strategy at The Kansas City Defender where she runs B-REAL (Black Radical Education for Abolition and Liberation) Academy, an organizing fellow with Decarcerate KC, and the first Poet Laureate of Kansas City, MO. Melissa is the founder of the abolitionist arts and organizing event series, A Nation In Exile. And is now a poetry editor with Turnsol Editions.
www.melissaferrerand.com
