The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: PRESSURED SPEECH by germ lynn

This selection, chosen by guest editor Jillian Fantin, is from PRESSURED SPEECH by germ lynn, released by Bottlecap Press in 2022.

overture

i will always need a story
i will break my own heart!

collapse!
fall in love
with the tar pit

get clean again even!
for the story

tell me about your harbinger
the crosswalk
knuckles crackling in the speakerbox
mutters of the dictator
breaking through the crowdsurf

tell me the corner i can find it
tell me about the future that renders it

ubiquitous

sometimes,
i feel so greedy for people
i want the people at the happy acre
TV dinner people
 
& the people who run the raptor farm
& the people in hospital ceilings

                                                        under anesthesia
& the people who never said they didn’t want me
& the people who know nothing about it

I saw the advertisement
for the advil and thrilled
even though I’m not sick

healing seemed
spontaneous like joy
& possible like pills

germ lynn is a writer and cellist. Their poetry can be found most recently in The Reservoir, a collection published by Autonomedia Press. Their debut chapbook PRESSURED SPEECH was published as a Bottlecap Press feature. Their science fiction chapbook What You Call was published by Radix Media as part of their Futures series. they are currently working on compositions for solo voice and cello.

Jillian A. Fantin is a writer with roots in the American South and north central England. They are a 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Intern, a 2021 Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet Fellow, and a 2020 Jefferson County Memorial Project Research Fellow. With writer Joy Wilkoff, they co-founded and edit RENESME LITERARY. Jillian’s debut chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, will be released this coming summer from Ghost City Press, and more of their writing appears in American Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Tilted House, Spectra Poets, Barrelhouse, and poetry.onl, among others.