For another taste of our Fall 2016 issue before it flies on 9/22, here’s “artemis,” one of five sizzling poems in the issue written by the incomparable Monica Lewis. To read all five– plus poetry & prose by 15 more of the planet’s flappiest writers– you can buy a digital (PDF) copy of FLAPPERHOUSE #11 for $3US, or a paper copy for $6US.

(And if you’ll be in the NYC area on Wednesday 9/21, you can hear Monica perform her work– along with seven other stellar writers– at our 10th Reading at Brooklyn’s Pacific Standard!)

{ X }

I KNOW THAT I WAS NOT MEANT TO HAVE YOUR TWINS,
theo and felicity, perfectly, preciously named, because we
would have conceived a tornado: artemis and she would have broken me into
postpartum and I’d have given her a life-long restlessness. I love you
still, and our daughter would have had your sea glass eyes and my wind-twisted,
night flight of curls, skin the color of brown feathered birds, and in her wake, always,
the scent of caribbean salt—but most certainly, a mouth unhinged—sharp & wise & legs always set to go and a hand unrelenting toward any necessary slay – yes we’d have created a warrior in flesh, alit & strong, but instead, I will birth her into words. and she will  outlive our love, our could have, should have never been love. our love that would have quaked
a goddess to earth – one incapable of ever splitting herself into two.

{ X }

MONICA LEWIS lives in Brooklyn, New York and holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. Her fiction and nonfiction appear or are forthcoming in The James Franco Review, The Margins,and Bird’s Thumb, and her poetry in Rust + Moth, The Boiler Journal, Yes, Poetry, Breadcrumbs, the Shade Journal, among others. She is a VONA/Voices alumna and an assistant editor for NOON.