Cotton Xenomorph is a literary journal produced with the mission to showcase written and visual art while reducing language of oppression in our community. We are dedicated to uplifting new and established voices while engaging in thoughtful conversation around social justice.

Outburst as Thomasin

by Emily Corwin

let’s to the wood and I will vanish you               your spirit smeared
               under my riding cloak, my waistcoat               smock and petticoat               sugarloaf hat

               kerchief               let me scrub your woolens and billhook               I will keep secret
about the wood               clickety clackety               there you are               I will have you for meat cutlet

there you are               your fibula wriggles               on the chopping block
               the leg-hold trap               beseech me not               I slurp, wagging my jaws in a yolk sac 

the chick never incubated               never eggtooth               a baby in a butter churn mashed      
               baa baa baa               Black Philip holds fast               he gallops against my lumbar disc

               myself undressed               I confess: I have been delicious as satin tinseled
I’ll be in field, rid of my kindred reek               stockings off               what went we out to find

               if not wolves athirst               I dangle from the jack pines
sucking on a silver chalice.


Emily Corwin is an MFA candidate in poetry at Indiana University-Bloomington and the former Poetry Editor for Indiana ReviewHer writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, New South, Yemassee, Grist, THRUSH, and elsewhere. She has two chapbooks, My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press) and darkling (Platypus Press) which were published in 2016. Her first full-length collection, tenderling is forthcoming in 2018 from Stalking Horse Press. You can follow her online at @exitlessblue

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