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.

Snow

by Ava Winter

I miss this more than sex:
to be held afterward by a man
whose belt has bruised my skin.

Into the snow I stepped
as a boy each time it fell
to feel something. Barefoot

into the burning white
I would run
and then return

to my mother
waiting
with something warm to drink.

I live between bars now
and the snow outside is soiled
as it falls. So I stay in,

eyeing a grid of men
who’d like to leave me
more lonely

than I already am.
Perhaps it’s unfair to project
intent

when disregard has served me
just as well. I’m trying
to find language for what we do

to one another, by which I mean
what I have done to another,
and another, and another.


Ava Winter wrote the poetry chapbook Safe House (Thrush Press, 2013). Their poems have also appeared in The Baffler, Grist, Meridian, Muzzle, Ninth Letter, Poetry International, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. They received his MFA from The Ohio State University, an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and a Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University. Ava is currently a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Dear Andy

Moth Season