vagabond city

Cody Stetzel is a Seattle resident working within communications and ethical technologies. They are a contributing writer for Tupelo Quarterly and the Colorado Review, where they offer reviews and criticism of contemporary poetry, poetry in translation, and more. They are a volunteer organizer and event staff for Seattle’s poetry bookstore Open Books: A Poem Emporium. […]

The cliffside acts as morsel to the seawater feasting on rockCollapsible chairs sit unevenly along the cliff’s edge This is a weddingMy wedding dayA marriage of body and bodyBut for meit is a reckoningThis dormant queerness in me erupts And somewheremy father sitsmy mother and sister toowaiting for the ceremony to beginBut offstageI am threading […]

The first high school reunion is a funeral.Afterwards, we chainsmoke in the backyard because language isn’t always enoughto get us through. There are people still alive in this world who need me (you) &feeling fluctuates though freeways refuse.I know the route & want it over withsince no one teaches in a ghost-cluttered classroom, except for […]

i was once mistaken for sunlight – soon i will be nothing again – i now dream only – of green compost bins – & the first law of thermodynamics – when he first picked me – the plantation was still green – chloroplast woven ionic sets – he called me yellow – & my […]

This morning was one of those mornings when I felt   distance, between my daughters and me. Now an ocean away, now living lives I follow on Instagram. With people I don’t know. How strange to hold a being inside, to feel that first kick to the ribs (a sign that life is becoming) and then,  […]

He never really liked her, his Marytoo pure, too fuckin’ piousnot interested in frolicking in bedkamasutra-ing new positionstangling like Twisteractually a bit of a borehours spent on calloused kneesmurmuring strings of nonsenseinstead of fixing him steak and fries Glad she said god was the fatherglad she said she was a virginno #metoo gonna happen herehe […]

You can build it [1] You can build a math equation you can build a rocket you can build the brass-bright saxophone you can build the artery as it greasily explodes you can build the lightning strike you can build the star dense but fuzzy from light years away you can build the walls of […]

All this beauty around us. Whatare we to do with friendship? So easy-bodied, piled together on floor or couch, webend, bind, brace. Herbitten lip in mid thought. Theirbaggy legged short shorts,corduroy shirt stroke. Hiscollar bone become sweat slidedew skinned in low light. Kitchen-doorwaydialogue at the party. Goddamn.Elastic imprint on the wrist.Fold of skin, secret space.Guttural […]

but i wish myself intothe titanic’s turkish baths,2 – 6 p.m.: men only hours,not despite its sinking butto de-baptize our longing;give me that high-conceptlow-effort kind of fatality:two queer bodies buriedinto drowning loungers& let’s fallinto each other’s skinbecause i can no longer standthat every love song turnsinto a confession of hunger,at least a ship wrecks its […]

Teigan Lan is a queer Chinese writer, student, and community organizer. They write personal essays for their Substack, and have published op-eds with the Toronto Star and Melanin Base Camp. They are very fond of Mitski.

Love, I amkintsugi, shards and lacquer, I repairmyself  in gold. I am a mosaic Vesuvius cannot  erase. You willexcavate memories like fragments preserved in ash. I am Michelangelo, I make stone flow into silk. Cut me away  and I become a monument.  So hide from this collapse. Love, I am Chauvet Cave, full of art. You will miss the way I bent […]

Back then, a few bodies ago, you knew how to get your dreams delivered. You would sleep in the shape of a question mark and the empty side of the bed would be the silent answer. Now the silence is broken by you answering the door late, groggy. Now dreams are strangers’ hands, with covered […]

Addison Branson (she/they) is a poet, data analyst, and anthropologist from Winston-Salem, NC. As a queer writer, they explore themes of identity, broken connection, and the disaster of human experience. When she isn’t working, Addison can often be found at a local bar enjoying a white negroni, engrossed in a book, and enthusiastically playing cards, […]

It fidgetsforever restless, migrating through meby the minute, blooming like a bruise beneath my skinfrom a fall I don’t remember taking,its tendrils ticklingas it scrapes away the subcutaneous layer—It growsin my stomach like a watermelonfrom a seed I don’t remember swallowing,my chest is hollowing, if I tapthe points of my breaststhe echo bounces back—It stretchesmy […]

i want someone to fill my mouthwith marbles—the opaque kind, with milky swirls of blue. i’ve spent so long like this—saying everything to please everybody else— that i need to start over from a mumble. i havemouthfuls of shame stopped up inside my gut, piled like sludge in a barrel, like bile waitingfor my morning […]

After Ada Limón Rain is the truest bright dead thingI’ve ever been afraid of. Rain as it beatsagainst a window, tiny little bodies,each drop a chance to catch something beforeit splatters. I live most of my lifetrying to avoid disaster. One day,in our car on the way to churchMy husband asks me what I’m thinking […]

did you know that you can reignite a fire by the tail of its smoke?sometimes i wish to be bright orange ashascending and illuminating the deep blues and wisps of grey. i could lie and say that smoke trailed into my eyesbut i cried within to the heavensasking for a flame reignited. i don’t need […]

It’s dead. The horror movie stag stared into a dollar store’s heaven. I stood with crossed arms, a grave marker model, skin pressed  Against the city’s street island tree until the sickly bark raised grooves of red ache Returning to a singed harmony. Pain is normal, this one’s new. Smoke billowed from the scattering sparks, […]

the floor-to-ceiling windows matter more than the whitish print ofa something bird, perhaps crow-like magicking through the corpseas if it were the first thing to die; i refused to kiss that bird watcheronce because she ordered quail eggs at dinner in this economy in this restaurant where everyone can see her eating another’s youngin this bed […]

The weekend night has a gash in its belly,deep and red, bleeding smokeinto the cool, darkening sky. Tomorrow,we’ll mourn in our own wayunder stale Monday morning sun,or in the pools of our noon shadows.At home, this grief drives us to mementos:bedsheets browned from barefoot walks,the bitter smoke smell from the clothes in the corner. Devon […]

Write something about sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. Get more specific. Write something about sitting in a doctor’s waiting room as everyone else is escorted down the mouth of the sterile hallway by nurses in purple scrubs. Describe the smell of antiseptic. Write about remaining in the plastic chair long after the lights go out and the doctors go home. Write about coughing […]