What Rough Beast | Poem for September 5, 2019

Hokis
Vulgata

puzzle, puzzle
go away
come again another day

breath
stare there, at the
table, at the

last piece
left, it is all on me

as waiting turns to covet
I say goodbye to infantile-
inoculated crimes

no more fetal
position, I am
born
My life
Your life
The circle of life

It is not up to His’ word
It is not VULGA\r\TA

it is my right-to-life
it is my t\HYMN\e

Hokis is a first generation American of Armenian decent, adopted by an American Family. Ze channels zir trauma-inoculated mistrust in humanity and love for puzzles into unfolding poems. Ze has worked as community organizer, high school teacher, and body-centered mindfulness coach. Poems by Hokis have appeared in Caustic Frolic, Heather Derr-Smith’s website, Line Rider Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Cloud Women’s Quarterly, For Women Who Roar, and is forthcoming in the Indie Blu(e) anthology This is What Love Looks Like: Poetry by Women Smitten with Women, and the Paragon Press Conversation Issue on Politics, Snollygoster.

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