“Purple Heart” by Joshua Merchant

Purple Heart

I walk into a motel room
that smells like hands I buried
in a mosh pit that shiened itself clean
from ashtray to tongue.

speaking of tongues, I flicked myself
in the forehead with something wet
and pretended it was forked, that I was
scaled. yellow eyed. cold blooded for knowing
the magic of making my own body shiver.

haven’t I died in another man’s
army of lies turned sweat enough?
every hospital is a foxhole and here
I am at attention ashamed behind the
attention it takes to love one’s body

through a haystack of needles
belting a soldier's song. you ever
licked a crack pipe? is that what this
body is now, residue? the residuals of horns

plays my thumping mind to sleep
and somebody’s prayers folds me
like the flag America tries to hide
tucked neatly over a brown boxspring,

“the body is daisies”

“the body is earth”

“the body is daisies”

“the body is sunlight“

Joshua Merchant

Joshua Merchant (THEY/THEM/THEIRS) is a Black Queer native of East Oakland, exploring what it means to be human as an intersectional being. A lot of what they’ve been exploring as of late has been in the realm of what it means to be a “delectable negro” in a world with an insatiable appetite for Blackness and the many ways we show up spiritually, mentally, and physically. They address the countless exaggerations of white fantasy as a means of humanizing the Black Queer experience through a lens only someone who grew up ashy and yet a teardrop slicker than the average lesson any corner store profit could provide. They've had the honor to witness their work being held and understood in literary journals such as 580Split, Roi Fianeant Press, Snow Flake Magazine, Corporeal, Anvil Tongue, Verum Literary Press, Ice Floe Press, Mongoose, and elsewhere. They have also received the 2023 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award for poetry and have been nominated for the 2024 Best of the Net anthology.

Headshot: Katelyn Lucas

Photo Credit: Staff