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Aloe

by Shauna Barbosa

I don’t touch the earth every year. A soil break a soil live. I’ve been described as last minute and weak with the ocean welling up inside my womb. Sun whore crossing an incredible credible bridge closer to nearly clothed freeing weaning ground closer to me. Memory bows to rage. If climbing ferns can get lost, then this is me, spreading out, getting big, I should pay my own rent. Should stop starting and start stopping. Kissed a killer fucked dealers, I’m still alive and I’m still broke. Brown worry secreting between periods the aloe and the child. I’ve injured myself again. Pioneered a path to become as sweet as I am.

Shauna Barbosa is the author of the poetry collection Cape Verdean Blues (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Common, AGNI, Iowa Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Lit Hub, and others. She was nominated for PEN America’s 2019 Open Book Award and received her MFA from Bennington College.

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