Morgan Lacomba Pearse is a disabled queer writer and artist based the Hudson Valley, New York. She is the author of the hybrid graphic novella Spay Your Baby (nico fontana, 2021). She holds an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University.
mom is a circular plot
she is watching a horse get cut open on tv. she is eating dry tortilla chips and drinking light
brown water from a 32 oz mason jar. it is water with a splash of diet coke.
i drop
a primordial
black hole
in her drink
she touches me
and i know what to think
my poems make sense
i’m not an ecorche
maybe i don’t exist at all
and it’s fine
she makes real food with real butter
and cares about salt
and most importantly
she does not forcibly insist to me that it’s good it’s not lit up like walmart
there are warm light bulbs in beautiful lamps there are no beeping clocks in every room
we don’t avoid each others gaze
the gallon of disinfecting body wash
is replaced with
something small handmade
and bespoke
dirt is ok
sex is ok
she is not looking to me to tell her
anything specific
she has her own life
she is someone else
and i am nothing like her
songbird carving (for arina)
should i continue the nationality disclosure thing
i grew up in russia
you said it in my mind
which probably doesn’t count
you laugh
it’s been ten years
i go on a date
with someone who looks like you
but with mass
opaque
how do i tell them
i have to tell them
you laugh
some arcana
me
palefaced
a deer in
your piss sphinx pipeline
you ask who could pose for me
sleeping for five minutes
you laugh
i give you my white sheet
and i still have the pillowcase
my stomach hurts
are you cold? put your hands
in my armpits
you laugh
in a book you underlined
is my life over?
and the answer was
yes
you tape together tarot cards with band-aids
they unfurl on the unswept floor
you say this means _____ was waiting for me
i can’t remember
did our apartment get broken into
remember the soundproof box
that didn’t work
you helped me break it down
to put in the frat boys dumpster
you laugh
why is the find a grave website
halloween themed
is this a joke
i thought i dreamt you up
but i don’t have the imagination
i grew up in
pennsylvania
you laugh
this is the best i can do
i’m still waiting for your note
to come true
butterflies stuck
in oily gray
clay waves
overhead is
swallowing
and exploding
this is messy
but i can’t claim any of it’s mine