BREAKING: one man dead from Bikini Kill crowd, no one cares

by Liam Strong

the lip of the Sprite can is a blade. it’s tenable that the definition of a blade is a thin concept, broad & elastic over my binding. belief like skim milk, zero percent, belief in what’s there, my pussy or dick or whatever you want to name them. hypothesis of underwear, abstract of the underworld. my tits, my anti-tits, my tongue which looks like any other. if i remove both ankles, then i have no weakness. Achilles is the lesser of two lessons–one that he is worth discussing at all. the other that his name means we will suffer from sorrow in his wake. a man on the edge of the pit keeps trying to get my attention between songs & i want to smell petrichor in the aluminum. it’s like wanting the reek of blood even though skin harbors its release. it’s unfair. when i need to be split wide open & have my tendons rearranged, bloody steel just won’t cut it. no, i don’t want to be fucked, i don’t want to be made love to, i don’t want to have sex or any of its other pseudonyms & etymologies, no. crowds around me make existing look so simple, my body & its other bodies on a day-to-day basis, like apples & bananas oxidizing into conclusion. research shows decay depends on the organism, which explains a lot. so much. that i’m here, always living & dying my best life, shoving unnecessary flesh into places it doesn’t belong.

Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent straight edge 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). 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/Twitter: @beanbie666