Joanna Acevedo
Joanna Acevedo is the author of the poetry collection The Pathophysiology of Longing (Black Centipede Press, 2020) and the short story collection Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021). Her work has been seen in Seventh Wave Magazine, the Scarlet Leaf Review, Track Four, and many others. She is a Hospitalfield 2020 Interdisciplinary Resident, an NYU Goldwater Fellow, Prose Editor at Inklette Magazine and Poetry Editor at Frontier Poetry. She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021. https://www.joannaacevedo.net/
Girl Country
After Emily Skaja
What a girl learns on her back at 19 can be easily relearned on her knees at 23
With a cup of whiskey in between her teeth.
We’re finding the bodies now, we’re telling all the secrets.
If we were anything other than what we are, then I’m history repeating itself.
Hold me in your fingers, flick the ember, tell me the lies
I’m desperate to hear. Promise me the Devil can’t touch us,
Promise me we’re golden. Put the coin underneath your tongue,
Press the prayer to your sternum, keep me close. This here is girl country.
What you can do with a Colt .45 is similar to what I can do with a pen.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 