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1 poem
by joanie moss braddock
joanie moss braddock is a queer trans poet completing her undergraduate degree in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Her work has been published in Headwaters, Pansy Collective Compilation Zine, and Apricity. She received the Topp-Grillot Scholarship for Strongest Students in Poetry in 2016, and her poem "St John in the Wilderness" received an honorable mention in the Association of Writer's & Writing Programs' 2019 Intro Journals Project. Her work captures an ethics of curiosity, parsing the intimately personal and the painfully cryptic with tenderness, wonder, and care. She believes in cultivating and sustaining community through artistic, political, and personal work (which are often the same) as a means of resisting alienation.
Saying It
My heart is divided into many birdsongs,
and I am hearing my name tasted
and I am not wanting to be devoured
I am wanting to be told
this is your name thank you
i love you say it back
I am saying it in a dream
on your neck in beetle-tusks
I am shaping the words in mouth
when I retell the fairytale where you untie
the ribbon from my neck but I leave out
the specifics I am saying it