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Lily Rose Kosmicki :: Four poems from The Fairly Ridged Sharp Protuberance from a Living Thing


worn out shoe: circulatory
on the first day of all time,
repeat the vitals:
before you have a
veneer or cracks

roundabout loops in
a drenched yearning circle:
where maroon blood islands
are filled with lionized arteries

reoccurring swimming
through “i like it and
 i love it and so,
 i love my day”

if only we were known, known only by paper, why not? if
times talk to each other, talk to themselves, time and time again,
during again-times, when all is open: all shapes, stars purple, neon orange
thaws with a pen and the idea aorta pushes into scrolls and skulls, single celled bacteria
little girls who are and are not made of, made from, and made by: words/blood moving



swerve war: proprioception

puzzles and                                                                                                   kudzu
experiments                                                                                                    become her
in a beautiful cave                                                          she’s making her own house out of
instinctive togetherness                                              where one’s grasp of the inner ears
makes sense of where we all are                                             where everyone is in the house
or world, she wrote for me                                                            when i didn’t have arms
sometimes each day,                                                                       i saw tightropes:
sixth sense                                                                                                rendered

tendons don’t look, they juggle, i wobble, we cock labyrinthine heads tender
at patterns and paradigms, like flowering plants, what brain even sees itself?
shape oneself in exposure and refuge in an exponential wild, always we love it
little girl’s phalanges and inquiries make spindles, orbs, spheres, back and forth
what could this mean? from here to there, it’s too close to see



arch skiff: muscular
slime molds weigh on me meaningfully
they divert and deflect
in strange mirrors of small girl worlds


wrapped in taut attention and taut heat
smooth cardiac
manipulates my surroundings


bound by state and time of being
young and unfurled
commemorating my fantasies

will it hold me? they imagined me, ligaments frayed and whipping around
i didn’t always hate this world, my brambles bent striations, they contract in child’s play
brush the surface tension with a bow and arrow, i became a common oddity
what can you trust of what someone else tells you about yourself?
almost nothing, nearly, in convening testimonies trembling: life is fraught with living




ha ha: reproductive
are you a good boy or bad girl?
was it ever
not a strange time?
maybe or no


my sprung-off progeny is covered in algae
seeds, hair, womb when it
mattered about boys’
clasp, desire--yes


i made a bat family
then watched thousands fly
pages flapping on babies
books shaped like pregnant bachelors

my geneology degenerates, fastening vestibules with sunday feelings: a pile of winged scorpions
on top of conception keys from veins form in slit rocks, seeds slithering in pelvic paragraphs
my panic wrenching, groveling, wondering, worn, pouring forlorn laughter from cardinal humours
deep within abandoned mineshafts of mercurial, rambunctious wave-making on the slipstream
silk gulch gushes thousands of black tadpoles, rippling seeds in shallow pools



Lily Rose Kosmicki is a person, but sometimes feels like an alien in this world. She suspects she frequently experiences a form of hypergraphia and/or graphomania and she is obsessed with language and the body. She is working on translating years and years of notebooks into poetry, makes cut-up collage poem-paintings, and illustrates creatures with accompanying poems that are (sort-of) for children. By trade she is a librarian at the public library and by night she is a collector of dreams. Her zine Dream Zine recently won a Broken Pencil Zine Award for Best Art Zine 2018.


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submissions :: where is the river

Up to six poems in a single .doc file with author biography and photo to kieferjdlogan@gmail.com All rights revert to the author/s upon publication.

issue twenty-seven :: January/February 2022

  Christopher Patton :: Glitch Apple Howie Good :: Three poems Kenneth M Cale :: Three visual poems Christian Ward :: Three poems Matthew Walsh :: POACHED EGGS Jeremy Scott :: Five poems

about :: where is the river

where is the river :: a poetry experiment is a bi-monthly poetry journal open to a variety of aesthetics, forms and experiences, with a preference towards showcasing work by emerging writers. There is no single path, nor any single way. Founded in September 2017. Edited by Kiefer JD Logan.