Stephanie Anderson

two bisexuals walk into your house looking for a bed

they saw on facebook marketplace. queen
sized, with a dresser if they sweet
talked a little

let me show you how the bed works, your husband says
sure, overgrown greenhair snakehead
audibly blinks, let me lay
hands on it. okay, your
husband’s cocked
up eyebrow, feel it?
your kids, heads stacked watching
the operation, eyes big-cat-big.
okay, greenthing buffers,
my uh accomplice
has the engine running
i’ll be right back

maybe your kids have never seen
a woman so tall. with blackberry-dipped lips and
butterfly-knit glasses, skinned raw and starry
in their kitchen. i want to live
like this, her face moons bright, as if
this bed wasn’t a rescue ship away
from sinkrot overflowing human
wastewater waist-deep sog-soaked rooms
where nobody does the dishes and
you can’t sleep alone
maybe your kids have never seen someone
with a flowerweedbed scalp genderwhat
dandelion forests laughing like
they’re getting away with something

twelve palm bucket run
the pieces to their uhaul
in the cool world’s spit
and they thank you profusely
when your youngest needs
to hand them gems from your junk drawer
before they go. he knows something
you can’t slip your tongue to.

they rob your house blind.
you’re much happier with the nothing.

starring in four one-act plays simultaneously

  1. in a sort-of summer i glisten, a loose
    gallium spectre. god. i think. i hate this.
    to an aunt’s greying carpet, i’m stuck
    on a badly-made lightswitch    . phone down.
    pan my irises once again, fingertips scrubbing
    gold into their surfaces. a divine intervenes:
    you know there are more options, right?

    Oh!

    ii. the first time someone asks, they drop me
    into a bell-bottomed bottle. toast an offering
    to graveyard ghosts. and break apart. say
    a prayer for the church asphalt and
    ask for rain i crack the ground for a
    safe departure from this faux earth
    with my blood soft we sweep our glinting
    medallions into the trash and dole
    communion in a split diner booth

    iii. if gender is a disease i am
    spreading pathogens at an alarming
    rate and leaving viral loads under
    the grace of my fingertips. i live
    in my nothing and i will become it
    but that is finally something for
    me and me alone


    iv. electric tender flesh in plaid
    maybe i learn to run in my casing
    and i keep going until i reach the
    reservoir muscles sweating swears
    and it welcomes me into this righteous
    muddy silt and debris and this is every
    thing i’ve been looking for

Stephanie Anderson (she/they) is a library worker, union organizer, grant writer, and MS Professional Writing student in Baltimore, Maryland. She doesn’t do anything else and also she was just born yesterday. Their work is out or forthcoming in Genrepunk, Black Stone / White Stone, Sad Girl Review, Partially Shy, nightshade lit mag, and a few other places. You can find them shouting alone in a graveyard @whoastanderson on Twitter and Instagram or @standerson.bsky.social.