two poems
by Ani King
repetitive stress injuries
on your way to a funeral & a girl strutting barefoot on the sidewalk with soccer cleats thrown over one shoulder & the impatient twist of blonde hair falling out of her baseball cap & her sunburnt neck & her resemblance to your secret ex-girlfriend from high school &
remembering your younger brother’s funeral & your secret ex-girlfriend loading you up with Xanax for your brother’s funeral & more funerals & more Xanax & your secret ex-girlfriend on Oxycodone & your secret ex-girlfriend’s wedding that feels like a funeral & your secret ex-girlfriend only calling to see if you can get Fentanyl & showing up at your house to see if you can get Fentanyl & sending her away & still loving her & sending her away again & maybe not still loving her & sending her away over and over & your secret ex-girlfriend starting to look like a funeral &
your secret ex-girlfriend’s funeral &
not going to your secret ex-girlfriend’s funeral &
the ghost of your secret ex-girlfriend waiting for you at home after this funeral & the ghost of your secret ex-girlfriend sitting at your kitchen table & the faint smell of menthol cigarettes around her & eating dinner with the ghost of your secret ex-girlfriend & kissing the ghost of your secret ex-girlfriend & her fingers in your mouth & the ghost of a Xanax slipping inside you
(i am begging you to)
let my people go
to the grocery store tripping down the aisles baby deer in new heels lips stained pink or red or purple or black let them be tender as overripe fruit let them be girls bursting sweetness new names plucked from field guides to flowers baby name internet searches let them go to the gas station for smokes condoms let them drip baby queen swagger or let them be boys in love short kings crowned in snap backs caped in flannel taking the bus to work breath-bound body-packed swaying around the turns let them be neither no not boys no not girls no yes both let them make new ways to say i to say you to say we let them take a breath let them keep breathing let them walk each other home holding hands not gripping pepper spray not to another funeral & let me go too,
amen.
Photo of Ani King
BIO: Ani King (they/them) is a queer, gender non-compliant writer and artist from Michigan. They are the first place winner of the 2024 Blue Frog Annual Flash Fiction Contest, a SmokeLong Grand Micro Competition 2023 finalist. They have work on the Wigleaf Top 50 Long List, as well as featured in SmokeLong Quarterly Review, Split Lip Magazine, Fractured Lit, Exposition Review, Wigleaf, and other terrific publications. Most recently, Ani has been awarded a Monarch Queer Lit award, with work coming soon in Best Small Fictions 2025, Bath Flash Fiction Award Anthology, and Best Small Fictions 2026. Their first full collection, Family Night, is forthcoming with Mason Jar Press in 2026. Find them at aniking.net, on Instagram as @aniking_author, or on Bluesky as @aniking.