Scavenging Regularly
Recordings are more alive, sometimes.
Fetid faucet. Creature warbling. Gray-palette confusion.
Borrowing from, the supposed, dead
this self-powering discotheque—
I caught an accidental universe
in an old, plastic bottle.
The same woods. Nightmare of your reverse. Ghost.
Always yelling. Looped jump-scares.
Red meteors,
or are they slow, angry tears?
It’s the noise that’s going to
bottle me up along with
all of creation.
The city is color-ambiguous.
The squid-space-deities are love-averse,
but most definitely definitive in their smashing.
I used to think the AFTER was so romantic.
I used to think the AFTER.
A relatively small, digital clip
of your voice
was the only thing I kept
in post-
production. The only thing
I kept
to remember the
apocalypse
had already
happened.
Elle Jay Snyder is a trans woman, poet, and part-time phantom from Staten Island. She has represented her borough as part of the 2018 Advanced Slam Team at NPS, facilitated workshops in her community and for LGBTQIA youth, buried herself alive at Queer Van Kult: Revelation exhibition in 2022, and published a limited release chapbook, Where the Knife Landed, from NYSAI Press. Her work has appeared in several anthologies from great weather for MEDIA Press, Lupercalia Press, In Between Hangovers, et. al. Her work is forthcoming in Word's Faire, and the next anthology from Querencia Press. She is also aggressively seeking a sponsorship from Mountain Dew.