Noll Griffin

Noll Griffin is a visual artist, writer, and musician based in Berlin, Germany. His poetry has appeared in The Purposeful Mayonnaise, The Wild Word, and Reap Thrill among others and his first chapbook titled “Tourist Info” is available through Alien Buddha Press. You can find him on Instagram at @nollprints or on Tumblr/Twitter/Bluesky under @nollthere.

Easy read of the poem in the image above:

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cw: animal death imagery, implied dealing with bigotry

Can I be normal to you?

The celestial dust of eyelid moths in a parking lot,

Blinks or coded cries for help towards the backseat take-out containers

Rotting rapidfire spots under back-and-forth compliments. The parking lot

Highlights scars that don’t excite you, that don’t make you reach

For perceived potion bottles marked with lurid slurs and

You just really want to belong, why won’t I let you,

Why won’t I be you, a rigged cervid skeleton crossing the road

With accusing polymer eyes right before the cartoon smash?

It’s all fake anyway, why do I care, why do I look

At the guests staring ahead, other men with ideas you don’t think I have

Across from the side already assigned in the nightmare late-for-school gym

That morphs into a field trip, look, the exhibit took me in.

Hominid, something not found yet, frozen in a soulful circle of clay and

Ineffective hands. Why don’t I sew sequin contradictions

Between practiced laughs? I have holidays I can’t celebrate,

Bars that misread malice in former choir boy hand tremors,

I have so much to give.