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.

somatics

you are definitely in orbit please don't subject me to another eclipse

i'm an ice ice planet & a cancer moon & a lump in my mother’s breast

means i can't call you that i'm all alone in this

my phone vibrating means more to me than the results of the biopsy

your absence is still felt first after everything

a shuffle under my sheets as i reach for the source of the light

my raggedy paw covers the lifeblood sun of your psychic possibility

															it is nothing

						  		  but a notification i shouldn't have allowed

								  like, i shouldn't “miss” things

like, i should call my mom

like, i haven't ignored your call
like, i’m shedding

& there's so much hair on this pillowcase

is there really trash in space?

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.