POETRY BY KAT STANSHINE

NARCISSUS

it's immature to claim

every trans girl would rather be a flower

a wilting trope losing petals of unused metaphor

but my heart melts for candy molded cliche so fuck it

I'm a flower.

estrogen injects into role of fertilizer

heart roots itself declares this home

skin softens this metaphor

is so natural

this bodyflower, this unkillable cliche,

this hint of breastbuds announcing

"I'm alive. I'm miraculous.

I haven't even bloomed."

Kat Stanshine currently lives in Philadelphia, where she studied and taught poetry before everything got too weird. During undergrad she earned the 2019 William Van Wert Creative Writing Award and served on the board of Babel Poetry Collective. She owns five swords and a spiked bat. Find more of her writing in Bedfellows, Hobart Pulp, Theta Wave, and around the web.