Adam Que
Adam Que was born August 19, 1988 and is a writer from New Jersey. He has competed as an amateur mixed martial artist. After he stopped competing and working to be a professional fighter, Adam started to share his writing. He has appeared in The New Engagement, Straylight Literary Magazine, Here Comes Everyone, The Write Launch, The Machinery, Slink Chunk Press, and Rigorous.
Loops
She felt silky wings whisk past her neck—
The humid-heaviness blanket her torso.
She felt the lemon-twisted freshness from air-conditioned stores with
Costumer-swinging-doors—
The uneasiness like a rhino’s body pressed against her kneecaps.
She found the boutique that her best friend who was more like a sister
Told her about;
The boutique seized
It smelled and followed her—
She saw the aliceblue dress
A temple of puzzled, sawtooth hearts lumped in her throat
Her tattoos caterpillar’d atop her sifting skin.
The stain was gone but she could still see the pea soup flesh into the dress
The buttons that refracted the sun’s gaze into a million halos
still dangled like the leaves of a weeping willow tree
It was her mother’s.
It was like her mother was there the air taking the shape of her frame
She could hear her mother’s whistle
The way she slapped at her thighs when she had no more patience
How argument was their way into apologies and “sorrys”.
She was asked if she was okay
She said I’m alright
She was told and taught by many to play those finite games
But she never wanted just to win or lose—
Her mother told her:
“Baby, you can play forever if you keep adapting the rules.”
Passing Forth: his great grandfather and him
We are dug from earth, milked from earth,
Earth clung to our bodies like a child on a parent’s leg.
My great-grandfather would tell me how the barabara
Made him feel like the earth was so close—
How simple that may be,
But how far it seems we are from it now.
He felt the whale bone shrug destiny onto his shoulders and,
The puffin feathers carry his fastened determination
That rode along the Bearing Sea.
He could smell and hear the crackle of seal blubber,
Feel the grass mats prickle his toes and
The salmonberries unravel across the inside of his gums.
My great grandfather told me how he found himself
In the clutches of a polar bear spirit.
It told him: people are not places to inhabit
And places are there for a peace we must sharpen with a health
That ripples from the brain and settles in the pits of the center.
It told him, love and hate is on the same plane,
That searching doesn’t mean being adrift
And doing what you want for you doesn’t always mean finding.
My great grandfather then stood up,
Shuffled outside, and watered the Lilies.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 