This selection, chosen by guest editor Samantha Duncan, is from In Our Now by Valyntina Grenier, released by Finishing Line Press in 2022.
For the Least Dead Brains
These synthesize molecules
These design brains
Animals sometimes attract a flower
So a hummingbird slips her tender tongue from her hovering
needle-like bill
But often animals repel
even destroy outright
flowers/ poisons
lick frogs’ viscous skin
Here—one species of hairy prick because a powerful-death-dealing
selective-
predator eyes
the great evolution of pesticides
Designed to kill is rendered better to repel/ confound/ cancerous facts
to expand the astounding
earning potential
Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, Neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the tête-bêche, Fever Dream/ Take Heart (Cathexis Northwest Press 2020) and In Our Now (Finishing Line Press 2022). You’ll find her work in Beyond Queer Words, Genre: Urban Arts, Impermanent Earth, The Journal, Lana Turner, The Night Heron Barks, Querencia, Ran Off with the Star Bassoon, and Sunspot.
Samantha Duncan is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including Playing One on TV (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2018) and The Birth Creatures (Agape Editions, 2016), and her work has appeared in BOAAT, SWWIM, Meridian, and The Pinch. She lives in Houston.
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