CONTAMINATED DOCUMENT
You want a hunk of my flank? You’ll swallow yellow #5, tinder,
maxed-out credit cards, wet-cut hay, gunpowder, old stamps,
pink clouds of fiberglass fecked with asbestos. The mind is built
on wind, the more important you feel, the worse the storm. I
wear my name like a tag on borrowed air. I won’t administer as
your night-nurse, not even in your inoculation dream. All the
warm human milk in this world won’t balm your need.
This selection comes from the book, Nerve Chorus, available from The Word Works. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
Willa Carroll is the author of Nerve Chorus (The Word Works), one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2018 and a Small Press Distribution Bestseller. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she was the winner of Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize and Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Narrative, Tin House, The Slowdown, and elsewhere. Her poetry videos and multimedia works have been featured in Narrative Outloud, Interim Poetics, Writers Resist, etc. She holds a MFA from Bennington
Nilsa Rivera writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe for Sundress Publications. Nilsa’s work appeared in the Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Selkie Literary Magazine. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband, son, and other multi-species family members.
“Contaminated Document” is a wonderful poem. Great energy. A lot of surprises.