Issue 26: Agata Maslowska

Herbiporous

we used to be interlinked, not bound

by economy, but living space

as a child I swallowed

pullum iecoris and cor pullum

which my grandma cut out

with care

I sucked ossium dry, the cervical

vertebrae were my favourite

I looked through the foramen

vertebrale not thinking of my own

now I sense

our alienation as assets

our market value fluctuates

from one day to the next

there is no difference between

l’homme and oiseaux

there is a difference

I invest myself into the economy

of plantae to survive I dream

of the corpus hortus entanglement

calluna vulgaris on my forehead nephrolepis

exaltata in my shoulders kalanchoe

daigremontiana: devil’s backbone is also mine

crassula ovata fingers dracaena bones

echeveria eyes geranium ears

begonia lips spathiphyllum vagina

maranta leuconeura circulation

ceropegia woodii in my chest I

loses itself deciduously

Agata Maslowska was born in Poland and lives in Scotland. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Edinburgh Review, New Writing Scotland, Scottish PEN’s New Writing, and Gutter Magazine, among others, and been anthologized in A Thousand Cranes: Scottish Writers for Japan (Cargo) and Glasgow (Dostoyevsky Wannabe). She is the recipient of the Hawthornden Writing Fellowship and the Gillian Purvis Award for New Writing.

Copyright © 2021 by Agata Maslowska, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.

Home  |  Issue 26