This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from How to Play by Katie Manning (Louisiana Literature Press 2022).
When We Finish Playing Cootie
He pulls my bug’s blue head off of its red
body and laughs until his breath runs out.
I flash to him laughing and knocking me
to the kitchen tile in a hug that tears the tissue
in my knee. The sudden smash of his skull
on my nose when I lean in for a kiss. The red
trails cut by fingernails across my face, white
scars across over-stretched skin. I put this
head and body back together and laugh
when my son tears it apart again.
Katie Manning is the founding editor of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. Winner of the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award for Tasty Other, she’s the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Hereverent (Agape Editions, 2023) and How to Play (Louisiana Literature Press, 2022). Her writing has been featured on Poetry Unbound, Tangle News, Verse Daily, and many other venues. 
Joey Gould, who is Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent>Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), while their recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meow Meow Pow Pow, Miniskirt Magazine, & Persephone’s Fruit. They also serve as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys.
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