by Robin Gow

The music box was made of bullets 
in a defy-laws-of-physical way.
Whenever I heard a gunshot 
my dad would say, “oh that’s just your sister
playing her music box.” I don’t have a sister
and the music box is made of thunder and fingernails.
I miss my tongue. It’s cutting itself
on the rim of a soda can. I drink carbon
like water. I catch bullets like wasps.
I use duct tape on the hole 
in the wall of the submarine. The water
is coming. The water is already here.

Robin Gow is a trans poet and young adult author from rural Pennsylvania. They are the author of Our Lady of Perpetual Degeneracy (Tolsun Books 2020) and the chapbook Honeysuckle (Finishing Line Press 2019). Their first young adult novel, A Million Quiet Revolutions is forthcoming in 2022 with FSG Books for Young Readers. Gow’s poetry has recently been published in POETRY, New Delta Review, and Washington Square Review.

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