Marzi Margo

we are only as we are

safe wishes to the reynolds wrap and electrical tape that keeps my broken air conditioner secured in my windowsill. safe wishes to the little brown spiders who live in that windowsill’s corners. safe wishes to the pink plastic piano on the floor next to my desk. safe wishes to my desk that’s actually an outdoor folding table from walmart. safe wishes to the tiny hot wheels figurine of professional skateboarder steve caballero that i recently shoplifted from my workplace. safe wishes to the many, many cans of soup at my workplace that have been collecting soft layers of dust for months and will never be purchased by anyone. safe travels to the decaf coffee that nobody wants to buy or drink in the midst of a pandemic. safe travels to my coworker who is twice my age and rants about the federal government injecting covid-19 patients with a mind-control microchip while we both stock boxes of cereal. safe wishes to apple jacks. safe wishes to the doctor who prescribes me my estrogen. safe wishes to the people who just burned down a police station in minneapolis (fuck yeah). safe wishes to my friends. safe wishes to all the sufferers. safe wishes to what the idea of home used to be and how it used to feel. safe wishes to gillian anderson.

movies directed by amy heckerling

i’m methodically extracting teeth from the mouth of a river and placing each one neatly at the foot of a bed, sized california king. someone sleeps in the bed and will step on all the river teeth when the time is right. but after that someone wakes up and before they get out of bed, they will spend approximately five hours playing animal crossing: new horizons on their nintendo switch lite, pulling virtual weeds and collecting virtual seashells and talking to virtual neighbors and shaking virtual trees and running from the virtual wasps who descend from those virtual trees. the someone in bed will be blissfully unaware of the carefully collected teeth waiting to make contact with the soles of their feet. but when the feet do meet the teeth, the someone will be delighted by the feeling, the texture, the small shift in routine.

it is okay to admit when you are tired

conjure these mental images in the following order: one, a blue above-ground swimming pool filled with live anchovies in a midwestern backyard at dusk. two, a big boy restaurant from the perspective of a passenger in a car speeding down a highway illuminated by midday sun. three, a watercolor portrait of playboi carti. four, a key lime pie-flavored stick of lip balm. five, a red stepladder propped against an orange brick wall and a panting, slobbering st. bernard standing guard to the right of the stepladder. six, archival footage of the 1992 los angeles riots. seven, a gust of wind passing through a field of wheat after nightfall. eight, paste on paper. nine, a row of five slot machines, only the fourth of which being played by an elderly woman wearing a hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts, in an otherwise empty casino.

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Marzi Margo is a person who writes and resides in Cleveland, Ohio. Ver most recent books are , yogaflowers and pink maggit, both available from Ghost City Press. Ve tweets sometimes @wigglytuff_pink.