Poetry

wet words, wet rot

By: Waverly Vernon

i cannot stomach the world we live in, i cannot stomach the way it eats itself

it eats itself, i cannot stomach it

i go insane, pitch chairs through glass

want to pitch chairs through glass, throw my body into a lit window

my body in a lit window,

scratching at my eyelids

my eyelids scratching

i see the edges of the sky blistering

the sky blistering at the edges

i walk the day’s verge like a fray

i go about my day on the verge

of seeing everything too clearly

everything is seen too clearly

i can have all of this inside me

inside me i have all

and it still slides out as words

words slide out still

sick with awareness of blood on screens

blood on screens and streets

we say we love our country

i say i love my country

my heart is a fist in my chest

my chest has a fist for a heart

a gun cocked between my legs

there’s a gun cocked under the table and all i can do is this —write

write this down— all i can do poetry, watching, fingering the pulse of rot

fingering the pulse of rot, watching the news i do what i can

i do what i can

and still, it is never enough

i cannot stomach the world we live in

Transcript of National Priorities

By: Waverly Vernon

Your mouths are transfixed. Your feeds transfused. Your hands cannot stop transmitting the same sermon, transfixed on a decimal place in the census, transformed into centerpiece. Less than one percent, yet you transform calamity into chorus, every flood, every fire, every shooting transposed into your single grievance.

A man is shot in the street— transferred into your talking point.

Children dead in classrooms— transfigured into your suspicion.

Bridges collapsing— translated into your tired moral panic.

The obsession transcends reason. It is transhistorical, a transubstantiation of fear into doctrine. A transmission of decay into daily scripture. You transmute distraction into duty, transcribe hate as heritage, transpose every tragedy into your crusade. The real emergencies—poverty, storms, war—transferred to the background hum, while you keep shouting the same word.

Look at your obsession. Look at your transference. Look at the way your fixation transmogrifies into worship. You live by this transgression, you die by this transmission.

We confirm: this fixation is a transmutation of decay into spectacle. A transfusion of fear into loyalty. A translation of hate into policy.

This concludes the transcript. Please trans mit widely.

Please trans mit again. Please trans mit until no other message can be

heard.

Author Bio:

Waverly Vernon (she/they) is a writer and interdisciplinary artist from Florida currently studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their work explores politics, religious deprogramming, and trauma, transforming personal experience into connection and dialogue. They are the author of the micro chapbook “soft-skinned”, published by Bottlecap Press. Their poetry has also been published by Wildscape Literary Journal, Creation Magazine, Arcana Poetry Press, among others.