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.

gps directions to your house on the moon

BY ROBIN GOW

i am grieving the caves of my own body.

pushing a shopping cart of cellphones

towards a blackhole. puncture wound.

digital clock. i take out my phone

whose battery i quickly becoming

a dead beetle. ask the machine

to take me to you. a blue umbilical cord

tethered to the moon. i follow myself

across a cheese clothe sky.

mesh & holes & holy. how to be

the muscle you need. unchanged.

you stood as a house inside a house.

holding my breath to survive

in space. your flowers all dried

& petal blown in the galactic winds.

you are home & not home. you would not

remember me if i pleaded. that is not

how a heart works. cannot be made

to recall a face. the way dirt

spits toads back into the spring

after a long winter. my cell phone dies

& have no way home. i could jump

of course, & land in the wild ocean.

you talk to a mirror until it becomes

a whole separate mouth. i do the same.

how easy it is to find your own factions

if given a box to do so.

spaceships break open. debris

makes a ballet across the stars.

there is no such thing as earth

for me to return to. inside your house

inside your house i knit my own.

sit quietly & hope you won't notice

i have written a future inside

your present. do not mind me.

i am just spilling

every parcel of myself.


Robin Gow (he/they/ze) is an autistic queer and trans poet and YA author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of several poetry books, an essay collection, and YA novel in verse, A Million Quiet Revolutions. His poetry has recently been published in POETRY, Southampton Review, and Pleiades.

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