Anastasia Jill (Anna Keeler) is a queer poet and fiction writer living in the southern United States. She is a current editor for the Smaeralit Anthology. Her work has been published or is upcoming with Poets.org, Cleaver Magazine, FIVE:2:ONE, Ambit Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Laurel Review: Fearsome Critters, and more.

Chaos

He helped me plant a garden
In once restrictive ground,
Bought me sunflowers and posies,
Made me grids of red spikes
In the ground.

He is big and faint around me,
Stumbling over apologies for spring.
I tell him it’s fine.
This is my doing,

Perched on his knee,
I am pink spine and bone,
Calling the spots into
My eyes to make them
Blue.

Appropriating lazurite,
He embraces our cycle
Like the sticks in my hair.
I smile, and push us
From under the ground.

[image: Velum Mural [inverse]| James Jean]