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.

Cento for Your Hands

by Gabrielle Spear

I want to know what to do with the dead 
things we carry: the history of the earth 
and the bones within it. 
A thing must have hands 
[to mourn] what it cannot touch. 
How many hands does a city have? 
Hands to exhume the living. 
Hands to caress the wreckage. 
A hand that is all our hands combined. 
Sometimes your hand is all you have 
to hold yourself to this world. 
How good is it to love live things, 
even when what they’ve done is terrible.

This poem is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from the following poets (in order of appearance): Aracelis Girmay, Adrienne Rich, Hala Alyan, Marie Howe, Patrick Rosal, Solmaz Sharif, Ocean Vuong, and Ada Limón.


Gabrielle Spear is a poet, history educator, and chronically ill queer raised in Northwest Arkansas and based in Baltimore. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Protean Magazine, Hobart After Dark, Anomaly, The Hunger, Sonora Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is currently working on her first poetry collection. You can find her on Twitter @gabsters93 and on Instagram @verycuteasparagus.

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