JOY BELONGER

Once We Are the Size of a Thumb It's over for You Bitches
after osmia avosetta

before the eat me cake
thumbelina will be the lily pad's princess pea
the danish girl quintessential

thumbelina will be sitting on that lily petal

contemplating the impossible things
the thumbelina bee born
in a walnut shell of mud

peels back crocus & trans vaal daisies

kisses the nearest gene that dies she
gathers & pleats her little vessel
for thumbelina b who needs honey

in a boudoir candied & ornamental

inside thumbelina dreams
of babies thumbelina b begets c begets d e etc
thumbelina bee on that hansel & gretel

eats her house down thumbelina

will be so small thinking she doesn't know
what we might give to be on that lily petal
to wrap each other in sepals green re

iterate ourselves ourselves till

we're the size of some fairy prince
who'd give us wings to fit & we'd be
thumbelinas & good daughters to all

the daughterless women who won't look up

Catkin (Ament)

in the order
fag → gal
evolved my "little cat"
inconspicuous no petals
from a quarter of all angiosperms
that swim through the fabric
of my skirts habitually worshiped
selfish pigments facing skyward
with rosids under such conditions
an inflorescence is bound
to droop to unisex
pollinate by the wind
which lifts it up
into a she-oak → little ruby cone
waiting on that angiosperm
to reproduce you want
to be reproduced in Latin
it means "thong" or "strap"
alternatively "they love"
& wouldn't we rather
all want our world from the waist
down (like that)

Masochistic Epistemology

hon you'll never reach that glabella bone
grown anthodite ie where a man buries his sacrum
hon you mentally ill mother you pathological t
hon go to a sea of trees & record it

grow real false lilies ie where a scalpel may help
hon I've got some suit warps your size
hon phase under the facetune & post it
the hypertext sings sui sui sui

hon I've got some cellophane that fits your face
forum aka nssi in the digital age in the digital age
the hypertext sings what hurts is true
what is alive is a dead thing breathing

forum aka harm by jury of your peers your peers
hons who also will not pass for she or male or both
what is alive is you hon is dead is thing is breathing
what is hon is mentally ill pathological is is trap

Kill It Before It Dies
after Evelyn McHale

woman chases bakelite
art decoy on an empire state
fingering ferroconcrete
sheela na gig of vita-glass
what I don’t want is
anyone in or out of me
to see any part of me
of this woman
are eighty-six stories
from here to yaya
a cadillac mattress stack
feels for a pearl to crown
with a clit could you
destroy that my body
the lengths I goes to
steel or fiberglass or film
fixation on symmetry
fixation on unvaried
repetition of shape
a vulva opens it don't
have any service for me
woman or remembrance
for me a glove originally
“glof” or completion & palm
holds calcite to my neck
on the other
side of cartilage under
a beautiful photograph
of the day my fiance
in a coat of resin
asked me to marry him
in june or may we
couldn’t wait for the
season of woman why
I cross my legs
I knock on wood I fall
from the hunky punk
why I don’t think I
would make a good wife
a name for anybody
& what can woman ward off
that I can’t dismember
in a suicide note or a scar
afloat on 34th street
this is much better off
without me wiles’ work is
vehicle for hire is ire
reserved for me a switch
at birth woman
these tendencies I have
too I have to

Joy Belonger is a queer transfeminine writer, educator, and printmaker from Chicago, IL. They hold an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where they were an instructor & writing fellow. Previous work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Cleaver, TIMBER, Nat. Brut, and elsewhere.