Posts

The Stories PMDD Tells Me | Emma Tuthill

How cruel
to ask you
to love me.

How unfair
to hand you
such a burden.

How selfish
to ask
for so much
when I offer
so little
in return.

I am
so small
and I am
trying
really
trying
to grow.

But I wonder if,
like height,
there is a limit
on our capacity
for change.

Something
in my bones
that knows
this is as big
as I’ll get.

The same way
I am sure
there is a limit
on how much love
I deserve.

EMMA TUTHILL (she/her) is a queer writer and freelance designer based in West Michigan. A classic earth sign, if she’s not designing, writing, or sewing, you can find her hiking with her dog, collecting plants she doesn’t really need, or trying to identify new birds. Oh, and watching horror movies. You can find more of her creative work on Instagram @thebrandanthropologist, on Substack @tinyfullspaces, or her website www.thebrandanthropologist.com.

Love it?

Emma’s work is in Vol.5. Consider subscribing to support Anodyne Magazine and its contributors. We pay our contributors dividends for each purchase! Plus, this is the only place you’ll find an ebook + print subscription combo.

Try A Subcription Purchase Vol.5

Wait | Dameien Nathaniel

I keep the sad in my feet,
in the body part furthest from my heart,
the body part which is always cold–

I’m told I have bad circulation
and a high red blood cell count
that stops the blood from flowing
as quickly as it should,

so I wear grippy hospital socks,
even when I’m not in the hospital,
and wrap my feet in a separate blanket
from the rest of my body,
hoping for some kind of warmth.

I try friction and hot chocolate,
but nothing thaws this sad.

I keep the sad in my feet
because my brain floats above my head
and the weight of the sad
keeps me grounded.

So when the hospital calls my name for review,
I have something to tether me to the sticky,
just waxed floors as I follow the crisis nurse to a private room.

Private here means so that we won’t be overheard,
but also so that the nurse can keep an eye on me.

They don’t keep pens or cords in the private room.
I’m told to remove my shoelaces.
She asks if I am wearing a belt.

She takes my hoodie and reveals the
badly-taped gauze on my arms.
She takes note of my medications,
Takes vitals and has me rate my physical pain
before starting her questionnaire:

She asks me if I’ve been feeling hopeless,
if I’ve been feeling sad,
and she scribbles down every word of my answer
as I tell her I don’t feel sad,
I am holding the sad.

As I change into a new pair of grippy socks
I look for it, but you can’t see the sad,
you can only see feet,
just like you can’t see me there,
floating, just above my head,
using the sad like a weight for
my balloon brain. She tells me I am
disconnected from reality,

that I’m not feeling right,
and that I’ll have to stay the night.
In the morning they’ll review my medications
and try to find something that brings me back.

She doesn’t specify if she means back from balloon
or back from this ledge,
but she tells me she’ll help me.
She doesn’t say it reassuringly,
she says it because she has to.

And as she walks me from the
always open-doored bathroom
to the always open-doored bedroom,
she doesn’t offer me a second blanket.

DAMEIEN NATHANIEL is a queer, trans, autistic poet from the Northeast U.S.. They recently completed their MFA in poetry from Arcadia University, with their work centering around themes of trauma, loss, mental health, and queer identity. Dameien can be found performing at open mics and slams throughout New England and on Instagram @SpasmOfFeelings.

Love it?

Dameien Nathaniel is our featured contributor in Vol.3. Consider subscribing to support Anodyne Magazine and its contributors. We pay our contributors dividends for each purchase! Plus, this is the only place you’ll find an ebook + print subscription combo.

Try A Subcription Purchase Vol.3

Tethered | Jasmine Duong

JASMINE DUONG was born a middle child in Rosemead California to a loving family of 5. She is currently in college at Cal State University of Long Beach. She has not had a lot of exhibition experience, but that does not mean life experience. Nothing stops her from trying to spread her art to the world.

STATEMENT: When we are awake, where do our emotions go? Do the dreams that bring us the utmost happiness or conjure up our utmost terrors hold a droplet of truth? In the darkness our feelings condense to create shapes and forms of color to dance in the wonderful world of our consciousness. To me building worlds, landscapes, poems, and all in all making art is building a place where our emotions can reside. Where it can be encapsulated and held to be steeped in, or coaxed out in the stories long forgotten by the day to day life. What is life if not with the things we can experience and feel, but can not see. The bubbles of given definition that include love, pressure, connection, and etc. I mean what is love? Is it the aura our minds swim in or is it hormones that course through our veins? What is addiction? Is it the little voice that calls to us for the sake of happiness or the urge we get that drives us into deep delirium? I create homes for the invisible clouds that blind, guide, torment, and bind us to live in.

Love it?

Jasmine Duong is featured in Vol.2. Consider subscribing to support Anodyne Magazine and its contributors. We pay our contributors dividends for each purchase! Plus, this is the only place you’ll find an ebook + print subscription combo.

Try A Subscription Purchase Vol.2

sampling | BEE LB

what solution do you want to end on? what resolution
are you set on? how far exactly does your sight extend?
no, this is not an interrogation. there are other venues

to approach that. this remains something like an examination.
a determination of the prognosis. tell me, do you still shy away
from treatment? does it bring to mind anything new?

where do you move from there? trace a map for me to follow.
this questionnaire will stick between your teeth, keep floss
or a toothpick close at hand. what was the last moment

you can remember the exact timing of? how far have you gone
from it? tell me what it is you’re trying to forget, and why
it was the first thing that came to mind. do you trust anyone

to protect yourself? have you realized i’m not up to the task?
you’ve spent years chasing anything that could name you
worthy. isn’t it time to give your splints a rest?

BEE LB is a living poet, or at least the facsimile one; a porcelain pierrot with a painted face. they collect champagne bottles, portraits of strange women, and diagnoses. they’ve been published in G*Mob, MOODY, Landfill, and The Racket, among others. their portfolio can be found at twinbrights.carrd.co and at twinbrights on ig.

Love it?

BEE LB is a returning poet with multiple works in both Vol.1 and Vol.2. Consider subscribing to support Anodyne Magazine and its contributors. We pay our contributors dividends for each purchase! Plus, this is the only place you’ll find an ebook + print subscription combo.

Try A Subscription Purchase Vol.2

In Van Gogh’s Dining Room | Tatiana Shpakow

In Van Gogh’s Dining Room,
I take my first antidepressant.

I go through the spleen, digging through the heart
of the kitchen, and set the table for the start of
the morning––a winter-wilted sunflower, an ear
steak, a tube of yellow paint, the color of
what my insides should be.

I stop when I realize I’ve cut
through the rib cage completely,
digging through the back,
emptying a bottle of blue entirely.

This is not my first little death or little life,
each pill the color of ego that ends outside old churches,
those daily pallet cleansers of anesthetic benders,
and women I never spoke to but
wrote poetry about.

My brother comes at half past 7 and asks what I do for the day
when I stay in this yellow-painted house. I tell him I’m on the
phone to avoid showing bloodshot––I want to tell him
about my newest attempt by talking about
my dead friends, my alive friends, and all
the people I don’t know yet. I tell him I‘ll never meet
anyone again.

Until now, I thought I was bound
to be a different nose, a cauliflower ear, a simple madness,
but he frowns, hands outstretched in praise like he’s calming
a rabid dog, and offers me green.

In Van Gogh’s dining room,
I take my first antidepressant.
For the first time in 20 years,
It’s all yellow.

Tatiana Shpakow is an anthropology student from Albuquerque, New Mexico, currently attending Kenyon College in Ohio. Her work discusses the navigation of het- eronormativity in love, the struggle to find identity as Queer, mental health, and the social sciences. Her cre- ative work has appeared or is forthcoming in HIKA, the interlochen review, and elsewhere. She has also received the 2020 Michigan State New York Life Award from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

Love it?

Tatiana Shpako was published in Vol.1. Consider subscribing to support Anodyne Magazine and its contributors. We pay our contributors dividends for each purchase! Plus, this is the only place you’ll find an ebook + print subscription combo.

Try A Subcription Purchase Vol.1