GLOW | QUEER POETRY FEATURE : MUD HOWARD

​Below you will find three poems from Mud Howard.

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f.lux

get pretty
lonely before
I pull skin
over my eyes

one parent
loves me
even if
I’m lying

regret text
sent in
my little
window

just know
you are so
my person
right now

---

2014

my brother is drinking again.     i’ve lost all my red flags.     i am a girl.
my tongue is a braid.     my ovaries have never been rhinestones.
i look like my mother.     though, we are not wolves.     we have no tricks
of our own.     we are rivers of hair.     sexless.     loosely packed snow.
trying to thumb the lid of a jar                                without crying.

---

citrus

last year I lived forever
I was the youngest son
I was a thin slice of bees
poured over a lavender field

I was the only person
who knew about the future
last year I didn’t have much space
for the occult

I was the shape of my legs
all mine
I was next to the person I love
I learned how to top
tore up the clouds
my groin was an electric hole full of acrylics

last year I imagined
the best pain in my heart
breaking out of the night we met

I was a murmur beneath the blood
you pulled out of my body in long, denim strips

I was cutting up lemons
trying to speak to my father
sweaty but awake
I was trying to say yes

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​Mud Howard is a white femme, queer trans writer who fiercely believes in the healing power of the selfie.  Mud is a graduate of the low-res MFA Program at the IPRC in Portland. Mud is a non-binary-qt currently living in the Bay Area, writing for RADAR Productions and trying to make it through the seasons, one mercury in retrograde at a time.