Tag: The Chosen One

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Chosen One by Vanessa Maki

dead things

  1. what do you do with dead things?
    do you let them linger around your life?
    do you hold onto them for fleeting comfort?
    i mean, fuck,why not?
    it was all downhill from there anyways
  1. no matter how deep i manage to breathe
    how many times i pinch myself
    i’m yet another dead (alive) thing
    one who can’t deal with myself
    so i beat things into a bloody mess
  1. this just can’t be me
    oh, but it really is me
    right at the core it is me
    a sloppy mess
    a newly revived thing
    someone who is an almost impenetrable wall
    a dead (alive) thing

This selection comes from the book, The Chosen One, available from Animal Heart Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Sarah Clark.

Vanessa Maki is a writer, artist & blk feminist whose work has appeared or will appear in various places. She has self-published chapbooks & currently has three coming out in 2020: the chosen one (Animal Heart Press) , sweet like limes (Bone & Ink Press) & decayed state (marlskarx).

Sarah Clark is Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at Anomaly, Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2021), a reader at The Atlas Review and Doubleback Books, and an Editorial Board member at Sundress Press. She’s edited folios for publications, including Anomaly‘s GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms, Drunken Boat’s folios on Sound Art, “Desire & Interaction,” and a collection of global indigenous art and literature, First Peoples, Plural. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Chosen One by Vanessa Maki

tabula rasa

ta·bu·la ra·sa

an absence of preconceived ideas or predetermined goals; a clean slate.

wake up

& there’s a blank slate            in your head

no memories of what

once was or                             what is

all you have is a bunch of

strangers                                  in a room

staring

at each other, taking it            all in

until it all comes                     rushing back

wake up

& mistakes are out                  in the open

floating around

for everyone                            to see

This selection comes from the book, The Chosen One, available from Animal Heart Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Sarah Clark.

Vanessa Maki is a writer, artist & blk feminist whose work has appeared or will appear in various places. She has self-published chapbooks & currently has three coming out in 2020: the chosen one (Animal Heart Press) , sweet like limes (Bone & Ink Press) & decayed state (marlskarx).

Sarah Clark is Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at Anomaly, Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2021), a reader at The Atlas Review and Doubleback Books, and an Editorial Board member at Sundress Press. She’s edited folios for publications, including Anomaly‘s GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms, Drunken Boat’s folios on Sound Art, “Desire & Interaction,” and a collection of global indigenous art and literature, First Peoples, Plural. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Chosen One by Vanessa Maki

consequences

chain me up / make me see the error / of my ways / make me realize how far i have fallen / there’s blood on my hands / remind me of that / my actions have snuffed out so much life / my actions have snuffed out my life / no more burning flame / i’m an extinguished fire / that’s smoking / disrupting the air / disrupting everyone / what are my consequences / what is my cross to bear

This selection comes from the book, The Chosen One, available from Animal Heart Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Sarah Clark.

Vanessa Maki is a writer, artist & blk feminist whose work has appeared or will appear in various places. She has self-published chapbooks & currently has three coming out in 2020: the chosen one (Animal Heart Press) , sweet like limes (Bone & Ink Press) & decayed state (marlskarx).

Sarah Clark is Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at Anomaly, Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2021), a reader at The Atlas Review and Doubleback Books, and an Editorial Board member at Sundress Press. She’s edited folios for publications, including Anomaly‘s GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms, Drunken Boat’s folios on Sound Art, “Desire & Interaction,” and a collection of global indigenous art and literature, First Peoples, Plural. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Chosen One by Vanessa Maki

passion

do you want me to wait for you in the shadows? or stand close enough for you to feel me? my lips are chapped now, due to picking at them. i’m impatient like a wild animal waiting for its next meal. i want to devour you like that. make you squirm in your seat. & so i get us to play a little game of cat & mouse. it’s passion that drives me to this. passion for unbridled pain or passion for unbridled passion. would you classify this as erratic behavior? i doubt it. you tend to be more unhinged like… say – you want to leap over the edge. passion eats at the calmness that sometimes holds me back. passion’s too damn greedy & so in the end i guess i’ll bring you more pain.

This selection comes from the book, The Chosen One, available from Animal Heart Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Sarah Clark.

Vanessa Maki is a writer, artist & blk feminist whose work has appeared or will appear in various places. She has self-published chapbooks & currently has three coming out in 2020: the chosen one (Animal Heart Press) , sweet like limes (Bone & Ink Press) & decayed state (marlskarx).

Sarah Clark is Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at Anomaly, Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2021), a reader at The Atlas Review and Doubleback Books, and an Editorial Board member at Sundress Press. She’s edited folios for publications, including Anomaly‘s GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms, Drunken Boat’s folios on Sound Art, “Desire & Interaction,” and a collection of global indigenous art and literature, First Peoples, Plural. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Chosen One by Vanessa Maki

the chosen one pt. I

i was hand picked by the universe

& it’s funny that the first slayer

was a blk woman

passing down her power to me

so then maybe i can slay

the worst of the worst

& white supremacy—

give it one stake to the heart

kick its ass til it bleeds

& if not i’ll try my damn hardest

be the best current chosen one.

This selection comes from the book, The Chosen One, available from Animal Heart Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Sarah Clark.

Vanessa Maki is a writer, artist & blk feminist whose work has appeared or will appear in various places. She has self-published chapbooks & currently has three coming out in 2020: the chosen one (Animal Heart Press) , sweet like limes (Bone & Ink Press) & decayed state (marlskarx).

Sarah Clark is Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at Anomaly, Co-Editor of The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2021), a reader at The Atlas Review and Doubleback Books, and an Editorial Board member at Sundress Press. She’s edited folios for publications, including Anomaly‘s GLITTERBRAIN folio and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms, Drunken Boat’s folios on Sound Art, “Desire & Interaction,” and a collection of global indigenous art and literature, First Peoples, Plural. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations.