5 Fire
Rae Liberto is a queer poet and nurse living in the Bay Area. Their work has been featured in Sinister Wisdom, The Lavender Review, Foglifter Journal, and in Black Lawrence Press’ They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing.
Let us touch hands to orient a year dowhat we can do must do the best with what we have
Capitalism is walking backward like an act of Godas the earth opens to eat itself
I heard the slap but I didn’t see the handI am told the satisfaction is in watching the welts formand what it makes you want
If there is a mother goddessshe’s reading the room, filling gapsand pairing lost socks like any other femme
The labor is in the waiting to be destroyedor suitably reconditioned
It turns out dusting is just as universalas the wringing of handswhile freedom is not in distance but in vanishing
and soon this will also change.
We are still alive so we must breathe the ashesWe are still alive so we must watch the world burn
I inhale remnants of schoolhouse
I open my mouthenter family photographsenter missing persons.