Two Poems by Cel Sanel

Sep 1, 2021 | 2021 Fall - Bodies, Poetry

Plant Baby

Compost me
I know you read the ingredients as you kissed my back
and can judge accordingly
Shovel me in little heaps and wrap me around a seed
so I’ll mean something, my decay will be a service
and I’ll use the oxygen that once emphasized how hard it was to breathe
to create something more
Roots will spurt out my belly button and hug me until
I’m no longer myself
Self-less ((service//cervix))
To serve as your next meal
I hope you like me more than your microwave chicken wings
and that the fruit I produce satisfies your hunger
I am only trying to provide because you were //
Useless
Pot me in with my pot
Then I can get high while I disintegrate for you


Swamp

tufts of moss on my skin
squelching in the wet places it likes to hide
perhaps I have a mossy heart
to pair with my misty eyes
and that place between my thighs
that no one seems to want to address
except for me
all wet, in my mess

 

Cel Sanel is a nonbinary femme, currently in their senior year at Boston University, who has been inspired by their teacher Leanne Hoppe to submit their work.

Related Articles

Imbalances

By Sara Collie I am 10 or 11, navigating some pre-teen cusp of selfhood when the question rises up, engulfs me, troubling that long sunstroked lunch outside the Cornish pub under the looming cliffs where I watch the waitress tuck her hair neatly behind her ears,...

read more

Voyeurism

By K. Olivia Overton Channel 62 at 2:00 a.m. features naked ladies and a man’s voice that guarantees the second DVD free sent in discreet packaging if you call now. Their shiny skin and soft cries made her tummy tickle like when she would rub her scraped palms against...

read more

Closing My Eyes

By Natalie Schriefer I remember not the paperwork mounding on my desk, staff stretched thin with the secretary away, but the background on my computer—the smile of my sapphic fictional crush, a screenshot from a movie, which I saw whenever I closed out a window, a...

read more