notes on a miscarriage by Daliah Angelique

my body is where things happen or don’t

my body is less woman,

more frog machine

my frog machine functions

in starts and stops

typically, brake fluid

when miraculous,

slime and

song

i carry my frogs

to the 7-Eleven

in the big pocket

of my damp overalls

my frogs drink sugar free Monster

and contaminate

the Slurpee machine

i summon my frogs

to the principal’s office

they each have problems at home

my frogs fail geometry and

ribbit jump away from girls

i reject frog language

and tune out frog song

i banish each frog as

a new one lunges

from my hands

the frogs go on to tour

new sites of frog abandonment:

the Mor Furniture for Less

the Wegman’s

the back corner booth at Friendly’s

and when i finally flush

my frogs into

the Puget Sound

they go to college or don’t

they make lo-fi bedroom pop

or construct new frameworks:

ribbit jump rhetoric and

longing for the fly

my frogs leap from me and

leap from me and leap from me

Daliah Angelique is a neurodivergent lesbian poet chronicling memory, trauma, and the queer experience of grief and joy. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Exhume Mag, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Off Menu Press, Spilt Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and NTCH Mag. She is a feminist healer growing through it in Seattle, Washington. Her social media for her poetry is instagram.com/daliahangelique/.