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TPCReview Issue 001

Alexandra Gilliam

BULLET HOLE FOR THE BIRDS

The bullet hole through my window helps me hear the birds better working paycheck to pay check work me back into your neck sleeping in your living room on the couch my own living room on the pull out couch above the puncture in the canvas pray for night pray for the rain to hold its furious eyes and this is another poem for logic for lice for liking posts for lemons or lions teaching the children the ‘l’ sound for liminal space bedroom full of light speckled sound mooncake sized century egg all these things we try to forget that reminded me of you







Do you know anyone who would try to harm you i keep imagining I’m sleeping and how quick metal is as it moves through air how we survive at all







I’ve written hundreds of versions of this poem in my head i wish this were a dream to hide between imagine glass in your hair you sleeping inches from the window little bits of light the officer kept asking do you know anyone who would try to harm you







Another version of this same poem having to file a report knowing you will never know feeling what could have happened if you were in your apartment these poems are so i can sleep

OBEYING THE GRIEF

                                                                       I made an opening without
an ending, succession of poems without titles

                                                                       A shot of perceived
normalcy, a orange chair leaving his hands and banging
against the fresh coat of paint, prayer something like the
adults out of town, the adults as parents, parents as not your
own, parents as the ones who we are supposed to trust, the
simple distrust of our own hands

                                                                       Distrust of our own hands,
finally telling, after you looked him up on facebook to make
sure he was far and married, you were pushed against a
brick wall behind the dumpsters of your campus after the
routine house party, his hands hot, pressing, first time for
bruises on your mouth

                                                                       First time for bruises on
your mouth, kept thinking heteronormativity was the
everyday, couldn’t be queer, could hardly open your eyes
during summer, fear of burning the backs of your lids, like
the slip of a hard boiled egg in your palm, that chalky center,
stop signs, stop behind this line, stay 6 feet apart

                                                                       How trust leaves you, like
an open hand, An opening, Obeying the grief

Alexandra Gilliam (she/her) is the author of Lightsheen (sub-sea sheen), Finishing Line Press, 2020, and the chapbook, Femmesturary, dancing girl press, 2016. Find her work in LIT Magazine, Second Stutter, In Parenthesis, and others. Alexandra is a bi-poet who lives in San Antonio, TX and works in the film recording industry. Find some of her photography on Instagram @poetsforsound