a genreless literary journal
Some Brunch
Your hands are handsome, I say over coffee and croissants. The alien over-pours the cream; our drinks are practically white. A thick coating covers my words, my throat logged with sleep and fat. The alien is moon-faced, pensive, each eye an opaque, chromatic lens. Through the window comes the smell of sunrise: wet darkness anticipating its demise. Outside, a ghost of sound haunts the swimming pool. We make our palms kiss across the table; my elbow knocks over my mug and the Times crossword is ruined. The newspaper becomes wet pulp, becomes tree and seed. The motel room greens. When I run, I sound like I’m crying, I say. When I point my finger and thumb, my hand is a gun, the alien says. Violence explodes through the window, sets the seagulls flying outside, where their shrieks sound like babies being held by the ankles, slapped on the backside so they might begin to breathe.
An Errand
We go outside for air, walking together but apart, all touched out. Night caps the sky like a hand clapped over a mouth in surprise and our skin is a filigree of goosebumps. Invisible lizards scuttle in the bushes as we pass, walking beyond the road towards a spot unguarded by stars. The one sound–the wind–is a sheaf of papers slipping to the floor. The cosmos opens its gorey eye and the alien communes with the unseen. I sit on the ground and breathe. A great expanse unfolds inside me. The incision of city lights on the horizon across my line of sight. A burgeoning field of flowers, top deck of redwood trees. Desert scarred by highway. All inside me. And yet I know, if they cut me open, the knife would come out clean.
Marginal Acceptance
I stopped dressing for the male gaze, I say. I stopped dressing for Fermi’s, says the alien. They are suddenly breasted, or I am suddenly noticing. My own chest deflates. We walk to the beach at night and plant my dog’s baby teeth in the sand. My gaze grows tentacles; all I can see is a well-filled pair of jeans. A waist I could put my teeth to. My head fills with rigid thoughts. I touch my face; it is rubbery as a meat market fish, numb from cold. When we kiss, I can’t tell lips from the cosmic, sand from existence, stars from shivers. A marvelous many things spring into being under the freckled guise of night. Our tongues only fragment when the sky starts to lighten at the rim, and we part, two warm and awkward strangers on their way to an errand with no end.
Quinn Rennerfeldt is a queer poet, parent, and partner earning her MFA at SFSU. Their work can be found in Cleaver, SAND, elsewhere, Salamander, Fractured Lit, and Flash Frog. Her chapbook demigoddess semilustrous will be published by dancing girl press in Fall 2023. They are a reader for Split Lip Magazine and Flash Fiction Magazine.
