this is the beneath
Savannah Slone 

These are our eyes that can’t blink.
These are our chipped teeth.

Our luminous, opal
buttonholes that we sew
together. Me, a marble ghost,
gazing into the mirror that isn’t
there.

This is my sea of hips.
Ilium.Ischium.Pubis.
This is you, jangling my
pieces together like keys.

I sleep in a dissolving trundle
bed that doubles as an operating
table.I am a self-surgeon.

This is dissolving inaudible.

My tendons, even my cuticles, are recovery.
This body is a clinic.
This is a paper shredder
wherein we lay.

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We, embers.
Them, tattered maps.
This is the prologue and
the epilogue.
This is our body.
Intramural plum cheekbone(s)
pillars holding me up.

Savannah Slone is a queer writer who is completing her MFA in the Pacific Northwest. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in or will soon appear in Heavy Feather Review, Ghost City Press, decomP magazinE, Maudlin House, FIVE:2:ONE, Pidgeonholes, TERSE Journal, Glass, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry chapbook, “Hearing the Underwater,” is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

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Moss is a journal of writing from the Pacific Northwest. Published annually in print, Moss is dedicated to exploring the intersection of place and creative expression, while exposing the region’s outstanding writers to a broad audience of readers, critics, and publishers.

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