Visions

Stripped senseless
W  a  n  d  e  r  i  n  g
Interlocked jaws of her first marlboro
She’s got veins strung up
like Christmas lights,
shooting through the
cracks in her marble

I lie next to her and watch
as the lights go off
one
       by
one
Were we always going to end up here?

No.

Plead, tug at her braids
With violent desperation
for all the hands that could not

Hands are stones in the Ganges
that weigh down the shoulders of the city
I want to sink with them
They push me back up

Stones are my cousin and uncle
in the ICU glass exhibitions
rattling their caged ribs
for one last performance

-The audience watches from afar-

Originally published in DAO, supported by the Arts Council England

Artwork bu Ekaterina Palesskaya

Natasha Huynh is a mixed-race poet currently working as a project intern for LiQ at Stanford University. She was born in the USA but has moved around all her life. Her most recent feature was in The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021 by The Black Spring Press Group. Before that, she was published in Christopher Sedgwick’s Pluviophile: A Poetry Collective, with all profits going to mental health charities. A handful of her work was also featured in RDW’s Poetry 365 in various editions. Find her on Instagram @tash_the_sloth

Ekaterina Palesskaya is an artist based in St. Petersburg, Russia. She studies a lot of realist art and often uses surrealism for self-expression. Palesskaya prefers working with oils but also uses other media like watercolors and ink on paper. Find her on Instagram @keke_93_ and @keke_ax