andrea lianne grabowski

andrea lianne grabowski is a midwestern lesbian occupying Anishinaabe land. her work lives in fifth wheel press, manywor(l)ds, Scavengers, and many other homes, including the self-published chapbook there is an earth after innocence. she is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee and former NMC Mag editor. you can find her on long drives being inspired by music, or peering in the windows of abandoned buildings. 

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

landscaper’s guilt

pierport & arcadia, july 2021

the lawnmower annihilates pinecones even at night.

atrocious sound, a chewing, consuming mirror

of my grasping fists.

if god is a hornet,

maybe she stung me so that

i do not have to feel the pain

of my curse. maybe she gave it

to me, maybe i brought it

upon myself.

my calves are twin flames, hornet’s

blessing. if i chew up and spit out

plantain leaves and press them

to my sunburnt ribs, will i stop

yearning? will the green pulp

bring down this swell of

self-loathing/validation-lusting?

annihilating pinecones makes me feel

very butch. but my hair is still in a ponytail.

i want to ask a cryptid to cut it for me.

i think i’m already too needy.

but i live in a small town where

there’s no queer hairdressers.

maybe the hornet made me a

masochist for a reason.

a thousand shovelfuls of dirt,

sweat dripping down my sternum,

this moment where i cannot believe

it will ever get better, and then, and then—

biceps sore and screaming with cold,

i dive underwater. and surface,

numbed, renewed, begging the storm-cloud sky,

is it wrong to ask for so much?

on dodging tradwifery, on singing to halsey’s “i am not a woman, i’m a god”

but i have no athenian claims. no aspiration toward the morrígan.

no triptych-self at the foot of yggdrasil with enough power to

spin the threads of fate. i am just a woman, or maybe just an aberration.

girl-thing designed by her maker to love only not-men. pride is a

deadly sin—not the way i wear it. so is lust—i reach for it. or maybe not

quite lust. longing-ache drifting through a sieve like rice flour. useless in

nonprocreation. useless in too-big shirts and unworked workboots.

useful in sand-soaked sneakers and hands calloused with the labor of

buttercup squash, citations, native shrubs. hands desperate to turn soft again.

a woman in a head-covering tells me my future husband will be so glad

i have such an established savings account. i laugh, say, i don’t think that’ll

happen. she says, you don’t? later, i let her hug me tight, more than sixty seconds.

what could happen is devotion to a daughter of eve like perfume oil spilled

in disregard for the cost. this, too, is sin, if not deadly. this is where my shame

lies deep and old: too much, overflow of affection, all the love i should’ve

reserved for god. that is the legend i will live on as—abstract figure

at the foot of a maple tree, twisting thread to atone for wasted oil.

later, the woman will chuckle, disparagingly, that she’d rather she didn’t

live on gay street. i will walk away, pace through the suburbs, harvest

st. john’s wort to soothe the stinging in my eyes. just off the curve

through onekama, there is dyke street. rough pavement not even half a mile.

empty my savings account and buy me a house there. let me let go

of any trust in care that stipulates concealment. let me stay this tender.

when i used to sing along, i said not martyr, but problem. but i’m both.

i’m childish, childless, churlish. too full of inertia and direct action,

never enough production and respectability. good. let it be so.

if womankind is made to serve god and raise up children, in another time

i am something else. so far removed from men as to become disadjacent

to power. useless, again. maybe a threat. maybe unimaginable.

self-portrait as hair clippers running out of battery

after Evie Shockley

self-portrait as 3/8” razor guard, self-portrait in the long lake water stained mirror. self-portrait as the sound of my forced laugh when everyone says how thick my hair is, it used to be thicker. self-portrait as the inherent desire to be clocked, as risk, as self-importance, as fraying threads at the edge of my cutoff flannel. self-portrait as the last piece of hair bleached by the girl who sparked my lesbian awakening falling to the bathroom tiles. silky blond sempiternal fable swept away by broom bristles. self-portrait as empty mascara tube waiting to be taken to the special recycling bins in the co-op.

self-portrait as my purity ring shut in a drawer. self-portrait collaged from saved wine bottle caps. self-portrait in front of austin, texas graffiti, rosy cursive proclaiming i love you so much. self-portrait as a 1941 butch. as a gibson girl kissing another gibson girl. as center-aligned fanfiction poems. as annabeth chase. as sally sparrow. as the first tube of mascara i bought for myself. as 2-terabyte hard drive. as hyacinth bulb. as the first bag of coffee i bought for myself. self-portrait as grand duchess olga nikolaevna romanova. self-portrait as yakov yurovksy’s bullet. self-portrait as maid marian. as dorothy gale. self-portrait while drinking maple sap from the tree. while i’m flying down a hill on a sled. self-portrait as the road-salt i scrape from my boots holding the same molecules as the tears frozen to my cheeks. self-portrait as the sound of the pentatonic scale played on a glockenspiel. self-portrait with stuffed penguin, aged six. as purple beeswax crayon worn to flat.

self-portrait as a future rusty house key. self-portrait as alewife fish gasping for air. as anarchist graffiti. as a faerie book found in tucson’s occult bookshop. as an old camo baseball cap. as unplanted vegetable seeds and uninked tattoos. as a softened, worn-out pattern folded short enough to be cut out as a miniskirt. as seamstress chalk with rounded edges. as a scarred-over pinprick. self-portrait as corrupted voice note file. as queer theory instagram infographic. as dried lavender. self-portrait in a stainless steel stew pot. self-portrait with stuffed penguin, age twenty-six. self-portrait clothed in lack of envy. self-portrait clothed in lack of comparison. self-portrait believed to be desirable. embroidered self-portrait the color of lies.

self-portrait as nearly empty lighter, as half-darned sock, as nearly full bookshelf. self-portrait as my mother’s case of colored pencils from college—a whole damn rainbow. self-portrait as beeswax candle, melting.