Headless_img1

Hock hostage | upside-down crucifixion | a modest meal | woodblock | tomahawk | wet thwack | quiet | blood-rocket | bird like balloon losing air | feathers | freakshow | feathers | black feathers


Headless_img2

Reptile relax | a belt of brass on the brick pile | threat of teeth | terrible spit | shovel | severance | copper now coiling | awful afterlife | just hose of its throat | trash-fire heat | bog fetor | head ready + able to bite | fuck you up later


Headless_img3

Boy borderless | mind oil-slick rainbow | smeary | on the spectrum | I’m the boy | humbled by | humiliated by | lights that lighthouse | no | chainsaw through | a few touches |

 

itching |                                                       the pink chapel

 

of my mouth | myself |

freakshow |

hands like feathers |

 

how do I lose my head |                           + still run |

become less animal |                     become okay feeling animal

Cover art: “Seraphim” by Badfuta

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Kieron Walquist

Kieron Walquist is a queer autistic writer and hillbilly from Missouri. He’s the author of Love Locks (winner of the 2022 Quarterly West Chapbook Contest), and his other work appears/is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2022, IHLR, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, and others. He received his MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and is a 2022-2023 FAWC Fellow.