Hannah Nussbaum

The Stranger

Poppers Friday at The Morgue

window shopping on Saturday

the corn tint of the yellow suited me

Sunday I walked intuitively

the world popping off like a shot

these generics breaking my balls

as I search for X, the trickster myth

the passion of Sisyphus, the reason, the limit

a needle in the cell of my favorite playpen

the pop cycle of days getting to me

pop churn of alphabet city

girly BMIs on grassy humps

allergic to any seeable culture

hot blue air turns up my lips and teeth

I crook my back, speaking verbaciously

horizontal cock in the park

hip rising out of grass

it rises most pleasingly

I tend to want myself

especially in the summer

matricide this poor little afternoon

it’s a terrible thing to go without refusal

tortellini and a personal pie

how the death drive is played

how I want my life, the trick

is to want what’s mine

sickened by the language

the virus that proves me

mind dysplasia

a thinking inside out

a bunch of years ago

I taught myself to time travel

daytime on a bus

a technique where I bookmark whatever instant

I am having the best time

my road movie on a Sunday

escapism from the cell

pushing my yellow paper sun

XXX

Cos X sounds like cossacks

Sin X sounds like sinks

my teenage cousin sounds like Rainman

my hot single aunt saying how

he lives to pick on her

how it’s his raison d'être

in a european accent she wipes an eye saying

I’m all things bad to these boys

the chocolate keto popsicle slips

through the finger

one day you just start longing

for a house

built by a contractor

this popsicle tastes awesome

this Netflix is free

on two devices

investing in the face

and in the neck specifically

now sucking the star

as it darkens the shirt

a pornhub domestic gothic

ex-wife ex-daughter sister special —

mature ex-cellist meets

big boy with a

vice grip

OOO

Air in my lip trying to whistle on a walk. The unresolved day my dad burned two cellos. Catgut strings curling up in a drum. A stone in a yard in dialogue with a tree. Very nicely said on a walk last spring. A yellow bird, a peel, an orange on the ground. Two big cellos in a closet since the seventies. Eight family strings going out in the grate. Out in the yard, the rock pile and the gate. Ow from the back. Oh from the top. Someone plays a cello near the lake on a walk.

Hannah Nussbaum is a poet, prose writer and essayist based in Brooklyn. Her writing has been published in Map Magazine, Spam Zine, Corridor8, Tank Magazine and elsewhere. Follow HN on Instagram at @han.nah.lee.n