Out by Hannah Nahar

Associate editor Zoa Coudret on today’s bonus poem: This poem floored me with its attitude. The unsettling self-exploration in the beginning blossoms into a declaration of personal agency in the last stanza.

Out

If lobotomy, mine.
My butter knife in the eye.
My dull tool, shining
and silver, fresh
from the dishwasher.
All I have on hand.
I’ll tuck it upwards
through the orbit,
forward and back
for a gentle parting,
an amicable break.
Clots of cells will leak
to be pressed purple
within my waiting textbooks
as flowers, as sentences
explicating other intricate machines.

I am a bad girl in my heart.
I already forget everything.
Come out, come out, endings and parts,
you will all learn how to dance in public.

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Hannah Nahar (@hannah_nahar) is a queer Jewish writer. Their work can be found in Electric Literature, Necessary Fiction, and Counterclock, among other places. They like being quiet and being loud.