TERMINALLY ONLINE

Poetry by JW Summerisle

TERMINALLY ONLINE

the unseeing object that makes your face

prints in plumpness

purple bodies. black hands.

the unseeing object that makes your face

places doppelgangers before you that

are not even one piece

unto you alike that

oh god it turns me blind.

dead girls who

once touched men were
once touched by men are
the girls who shape us

through the unseeing object that makes our face

through their falling spirits
slipping from the men who

shook them from their girlhoods

into ours. scythes

scroll pages. cut and numberless

seed heads hang heavy static
on us. drunk and broken black
and sleepless from
the unseeing object that makes your face.

i do not know you, amberlynn.
i am no alice either and i

cannot bear this weight of ghost that
draws my skin from the screenlight. fake light
that grows my hands to this reaping this

lonely violence that thrives upon

the unseeing object that makes your face
appear unto me just like the unholy dead.

the dark haired girls. touched.
or untouched. i can’t tell.

please —

JW Summerisle lives in the English East Midlands and often appears on TikTok @jw_summerisle . Their first poem appeared in the 2007 Foyles Young Poets pamphlet, and their first chapbook, kinfolk, came out somewhat recently with Black Sunflowers Poetry press.