page turner with full illustration, nudity
Liam Strong
———hills roll on, your hair curls
with the humidity, cue ride cymbal.
the huldufólk of Faroese mythology
are worth calling, to peel his eyelashes
off like anchovies from the tin. hush. straw-
berries in your asshole, out your asshole,
clouds the size of diamonds, sweetheart.
pillow on the headrest.
tinkerbell wears dockers &
a mesh top woven of barbed wire.
tits don’t appear in this tale, because
the moral wants to play hard-to-
get, harder, hardest-to-get, blush
with the face fully removed.
———he is a boy
constructed of several broken
door frames. once upon a time, there was
no time, couldn’t feel it beneath
your nail polish. once upon a
time he gave you time–that–a
muttering of eggs below the window-
sill, the garbage freshly omitted
from the narrative, candle-
wax lining your jeans, scalp, picture
books.
———cue climax, anti-
climax, full monty, four miles to
home, daddy longlegs following single
file. rhyme scheme, as in bad plot, his next
words clairvoyance, swingset returning
from neutral to apex. a godmother or
god of mothers is supposed to
pull over, flash her headlights, in
the modern retelling. it’s easier to let the dead
protagonist, the intended audience, scuff
onward through the flyleaves. you, too,
can leave yourself underdeveloped,
unwritten. you too can be just as far from an
ending as you are from a beginning.
Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cripple punk writer who has earned their BA in writing from University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook Everyone’s Left the Hometown Show (Bottlecap Press, 2023), and assistant poetry editor for Kitchen Table Quarterly. You can find their poetry and essays in Vagabond City and new words {press}, among several others. They are most likely gardening and listening to Bitter Truth somewhere in Northern Michigan. Find them on Instagram: @beanbie666. https://linktr.ee/liamstrong666
Table of Contents for Flaw and Favor