MY RASPBERRY HEART / *image by Amalie Flynn*

my heart is a raspberry juicy yet taut fragile temporal eat it now before it degrades and leaves a tasteless piece of itself smeared on the basket. my raspberry heart lives in the moment but not my gut my gut dreams unpredictable digesting whatever latest bout I’ve consumed pandemic fear fear of white supremacists

CLUTCH AND BLESS

my heart is a raspberry
PUT_Cjuicy yet taut
PUT_Cfragile
PUT_Ctemporal
PUT_Ceat it now
PUT_CAAAAAbefore it degradesPUT and
PUT_Cleaves a tasteless
PUT_Cpiece
PUT_Cof itself
PUT_Csmeared on the basket.
my raspberry heart lives in thePUT_CAAAA moment
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAbut not my gut
my gut dreams
PUT_Cunpredictable
PUT_Cdigesting whatever latest bout
PUT_CAAAAAI’ve consumed
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAApandemic fear
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAfear of white supremacists
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAindignation
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAincarceration
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAplayacting colonization with real guns on the range
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAa night in jail to protest police violence
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAhope for change
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAthe audacity to hold it
PUT_Call of this roils
PUT_CAAAAAmy gut
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAterribly
tangled in the past
PUT_CAAAAAit’s what I ate yesterday and am now
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAtransforming
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAto expel in thePUTA future
my raspberry, my beating heart
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAcrush it, suck it through your teeth, and savor

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Maggie Harrison

Maggie Harrison’s creative work has been published in the anthology Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color, Entropy, Santa Fe Writers Project Quarterly, The Ignatian Review, Prism Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, New Letters, Blithe House Quarterly, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, and Sinister Wisdom. Their story “Everything I Know of You I Know From Your Warts” received a Pushcart nomination and an Honorable Mention for the Readers’ Award for Fiction. Their unpublished manuscript, Molehills of Mississippi: A Novel of Grace in an Age of Terror, was named as a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and for the Lee Smith Novel Prize from Blair/Carolina Wren Press. Harrison is a professor of English and chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies department at City College of San Francisco.