This selection, chosen by guest editor Layla Lenhardt, is from MOTHERDEVIL by Kailey Tedesco (White Stag Publishing 2024).
antepartum
a witch is everything a mother is not i curdle
my screams make reverse-milk
i bathe in not-blood & advent my trimesters
the afterbirths strung up on the wall
how can i build my house out of sweets un-shoe our roofing
& live to tell the tale? i am not
the one who winds up figuring
what kind of fairest-of-all / what kind of deep stare
into the mirror of the lake i’ll be
once you’re born
Kailey Tedesco is the author of four full-length collections of poetry, including Lizzie, Speak (winner of White Stag Publishing’s 2018 Poetry Contest). Her most recent work, MOTHERDEVIL, is out now from White Stag Publishing. She teaches courses on Gothic literature and writing and she is a member of the Horror Writers Association. Recently, her poetry placed both first & second place in the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2024 Speculative Poetry Contest. You can find her work in Electric Literature, Fairy Tale Review, Black Warrior Review, Epiphany Lit, The Journal, Driftwood Press, Passages North, and more. 
Layla Lenhardt is the author of the full-length poetry collection Mother Tongue (Main Street Rag 2023). She is an alumna of the Firefly Farms Residency and a member of the Sundress Reader Board. She is currently working on her second full length poetry collection Little Spoon, and she is an MFA candidate at IU.
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