Exit Music For A Sister Driving Out Of State

This came a couple days ago, the fourth issue of Bridge Eight, and it’s beautiful and has a story of mine in it and it’s lovely to have a physical copy of.

You mentioned Richard Siken in an earlier ask - how do you find new contemporary poets to read?

Largely by asking other readers and or writers who they like. Also by engaging with people who are also emerging writers. Artists supporting artists is great and super underrated. 

Please feel free to send in any more college/ kenyon/ writing/ publishing questions! I have a lot of time today.

Creon Tells Antigone To Keep Her Arms At Her Sides When She Runs

Before the rope stippled with green pages of lichen is tied by hands, by mind, on purpose — Before the unburied brother with his chest surrendered to the wind, heart as still as a stone sunk to river-bottom — Before the girl tore off her name, swallowed it like a sword, and cursed her sister to live a lovely life, Creon sat with the blade-eater  in the clutch of a marble chamber and talked to her in the dim slip of evening, backstage.

The chorus ran their tongues over a grooved government, lapping at stone for honey, while Antigone, with her pitch-dark hands, smoothed her  skirt into an eddy. 

Creon tells her it’s a nice knot, that she knows how to tie, she says she’s a sailor, her eyes fixed forward toward the barred wall, moonlight coming in like piano keys, she plays at the strands of string in the rope.

She says she’s a sailor, that she can always feel the water, that she feels it now, how it curves  around her brother’s aorta as a courtesy, but will soon lend it to coral polyps shaped like loveliness, as the water always does.

His hand slides over the cold bench towards her crossed legs. In her head she covers his thumb with six-feet of soil. She holds the rope tighter, tracing the strands, feels her father’s tongue somewhere between wires, then bites it between two fingernails. The hand moves back.

When you run, he says, his eyes on the music of the iron bars, When you run, after you puppet yourself on this ceiling and leave two fingers of air between your neck and the world,  do not let your elbows leak up passed your waist — it would only make your shoulders look tight, like your dad’s.

He had tight shoulders? she asks, her voice slipping under a loud question from the chorus, yes, Creon agrees with himself, tight shoulders and a mole on his clavicle, tight shoulders, among other things.

                                                    - C. Essington

The Kiss - c. essington   (After Gustav Klimt) 

               someone spent too much time on something. 

              - C. Essington

Short story of mine published by Spry Magazine— check it out if you have the time and interest to do so. TW for some violence. 

hey just really fast because tomorrow in america, things are occurring, this is a queer-positive, and in general, queer blog that’s safe and small and mostly words. you can send me asks, I can try to offer support as best I can, I’m always willing to attempt to direct people to resources and hotlines. I hope everyone can find safety and comfort, you’re beautiful. we will exist tomorrow and on other days and we’ll be breathing and laughing through the terms of other leaders to come.

feel free to reblog if desired.

best,

c. essingotn

I work for Meggie Royer and this is so cool that this is happening again. In all ways, it’s totally worth the time and effort I’ve put in to be able to be a little part of this beautiful/ important thing. 

Issue 2 of my literary magazine is now officially live! Thank you to my beautiful, empowering staff for making a second issue possible - we did it. Twice.

To all the abuse survivors whose work is featured in this issue, and all the survivors who will read this issue, and all the survivors in the world - you are the dreamers and the magicians, the dancers and the risen. You are not the left-behind. You are the still-here.

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your healing. <3

in a bite of lamplight, he stands up to say I love you. he says it slow so he can feel it in his mouth, rolling like a marble with no glass to put its body in. no one is there to take it, but it is still true. It is snow falling, looking for concrete. 

              - c. essington

this poem is made from rainwater collected outside my dead uncle’s house

my dead uncle’s house gleams like a sore bone

a neighbor’s dog could have brought in, slicked with saliva and dedication.

the more-chip-than-paint walls stand skinned by the storm

that sawed through this county no more than two half-hours ago.

my dead uncle adjusts his death into the still-dying/ still-living cells

that hum on inside him without understanding. parts of him glimmer,

still bright, his hair growing like something shocking

that doesn’t know its shock— the silent video of those years-ago fireworks

pasted to the limp tongue of an elderly VHS tape, its fire

broken, vivid but mute, the cheers I know are there stuck in the air—

like the dark sticks to the night— I can’t see either. all those blank

shouts careening through the screen without their bodies or mine. my dead uncle’s hair

grows down to his knees, no one whispers the secret of his new reality to his follicles

so they all just go on spinning straw-colored beer-calories

into gold. I am outside the house and its long sore silence

which bends the water off its arthritic boards like an old victory I never fought for.

he was not a good uncle. it is july or it was about an hour ago. here is my uncle’s house

I am outside of it, trying to think up something new to call the place that doesn’t belong

to anyone anymore except maybe to those blond locks buttered across the floor like light.

I stand under the gutter and hit it with a stick. old rain,

which sat still long enough to lose its name, hits me cold.

I say hello, think about the hurt of throats in the old video from the picnic on the 4th,

how happy everything must be from behind the camera lens. my uncle doesn’t know he’s dead

like the cold in the gutter doesn’t know its name isn’t thunder any longer.    

                        - c. essington