“The Headless Horseman Sums Up” by Jay Aelick

You speak, though not
as language, of the dark.

Insist I call it by its proper name.
Again,

however startling.
Scuffed, scraped, I make

a room small enough for it,
a curling space

whose endpoint I name
Rapture, Fulfilled. I know

I’ll put its dead color
into my mouth,

if that’s what it takes
to move on.

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Jay Aelick is a nonbinary writer and critic who makes up 1/2 of the Saint Balasar University English Club Podcast, where real critique partners at a fake university workshop the internet's most infamous books. They hold an MFA from North Carolina State University and are a former Fulbright Austria Teaching Assistant and fellow of German Literary Institutions: The Berlin Seminar (GLIB). Their work can be found in The Journal, Kestrel, Poetry South, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere.