MEET HOT LOCAL UNSTOPPABLE FORCES

Many people feel inhuman
which in turn makes them human—
that ability to feel a lack of belonging.

Most humans get angry but I spend my days
behind a glass wall, a power drill
lodged in my forehead. Whatever I feel

it’s not anger; I wish it were so easily
defined. Humans have a capacity for
simple feeling, which, all things

considered, is their biggest
strength. Humans think they’re so
complicated. But I see them. Consider

two cars headed toward each other
on a one way street. The tenderness
as they see each other and slow,

or don’t. When you love someone,
that’s what it’s like.
Isn’t it? Every person

makes choices,
I’m learning.

Mortification

Let us now speak
On the mortification—

Oh my god, like,
So super embarrassing—

Of my flesh
I put my body down

Like a bad dog
Bully my sin to death

By telling it it’s ugly
And nobody likes it

And bury it in the yard
I get on my knees and wait

Having already wailed
and gnashed my teeth at fate

I have entered the realm
Of the intolerably Christlike

Mostly on accident have I fasted
Mostly on accident have I abstained

O Lord what must I suffer
To suffer more successfully

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Ellie Black is a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi, where she also received her MFA. Winner of the 2023 Pinch Literary Award in Poetry, she has work published in or forthcoming from Washington Square Review, The Drift, Ninth Letter, Mississippi Review, The Offing, Best New Poets, and elsewhere.