hot girl shit

Kait Quinn
after Amy Kay

We should all let our bellies grow long, bite the pomegranate, gorge our tongues ruby, undelicate our
dresses, trade fruit baskets for wet mouths open and unapologetic as a hot, vacant summer. We are no
longer surgically cutting our quiches, butterknifing out toast, sipping earl grey with pinkies lifted. We
take cuspids to croissant, lick honey straight from the comb, thrash into oranges with bare fingers, pool
palms sunlight amniotic. We drink our water 'til we glow #nofilter. Stain our knees emerald and bister.
Part our lips to the rainstorm, catch her in our clavicles, let moon drag us to her wild shore, throats
pregnant with howls crouched in wait for our fruit-stained lips to dilate. We make like wolves—umber
the sternum, crimson the jaw. A hundred and three degrees and stomachs bare, thighs gulping air in all
their lunar landscaped, canyoned glory. Salt carvings the stars made us. We are living for it. Not a clean
sole in sight. Not a neck unsticky. Not a mouth fig unswollen. We should all lie so satisfied, spine to
dirt, belly to sun. Sweat skin into oceans. Pluck seeds of the blackberry, plump and bruisey, from
between our teeth. And when we are hungry, we grab the plum, and we eat.

---

Kait Quinn (she/her) was born with salt in her wounds. She flushes the sting of living by writing poetry. Her work has appeared in Reed Magazine, Watershed Review, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. She received first place in the League of MN Poets’ 2022 John Calvin Rezmerski Memorial Grand Prize and was a Tupelo Press 30/30 Project Poet in October 2022. By day, Kait is a legal assistant living in Minneapolis with her partner, their regal cat, and their very polite Aussie mix. Find her at kaitquinn.com.

---