This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from The Birth of Undoing by Emily Patterson (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2025).
Asteroidea
You’re mine, she says, stringy arms
trapping my head to her chest.
Mine, with the certainty only a child
can summon, body stretched
over sand-colored sheets like a starfish.
When her father says No, she belongs
to herself, she strikes with sudden
strength, limbs curled and clinging,
and it’s then that I recognize her
claim: the one that, each morning,
I don’t let myself make. Prying
her arms away gently, I steady
her water-blue eyes with mine,
see the depths of us surface,
know it’s true when I say
yes and yes.
Emily Patterson (she/her) is an award-winning poet and the author of The Birth of Undoing (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025), as well as three chapbooks. Her work appears in North American Review, June Road Press, SWWIM, The Penn Review, and elsewhere. In 2025, her children’s poem “Small is the Seed” was set to choral music by Katerina Gimon and premiered at Carnegie Hall (Oxford University Press). Emily lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio and works as an editor at Highlights for Children. Read more at emilypattersonpoet.com.
Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.
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