Rosie Accola

Gym, Tan, Sonnet

The crusty remains of liquid eyeliner gum across your eyelid, amniotic
And forgotten in the ten minutes before clocking in at the t-shirt shop,
clutching a bottle of red Gatorade like holy water.

If someone ran a black light over the bar
They’d find newfound evidence of the Anthropocene
Primordial Protozoa hopped up on Four Loko
Rendered invincible from hair gel and Axe body spray.

It’s t-shirt time to perform the market as both the self and the market actor
No distinction between the private and public self when you’re crying at the club
Or sinking sweat-soaked onto the crusty bathroom floor as a stranger pounds on the door
Shouting about how they’ve gotta piss.

You’ll slide into the splits with the sluice of lucite heels.
A precise victory.

You never have to clock in again.

Velour Spell

We change into tracksuits
as our cultural consciousness shifts,
Slowly at first, like a bottle of nail polish
leaking across the bottom of a Juicy Couture bag.
Together, we search for the edges
of the warm lavender light solidifying a gel manicure.

Show of hands:
Who doesn’t want their pinky nail to sparkle with tiny filaments of the universe?
The smallest stars will brush against your cuticles.
Someday the static on T.V. will coalesce into a tractor beam.
For the first time,
when you open your eyes
You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Existing is a Prison Cosmic Turducken

Oracles never blink when confronted with the truth.
Survival feels mealy and pink as if we’re constantly being half-masticated.
Gestures of care are rendered sleight
as the toothpick skeleton of a baby bird.
We fictionalize ourselves.
Watch T.V.,
find ourselves gripping the slender, aquamarine neck
of a duck phone.
We make a push-pin promise
to go somewhere new and exciting,
out West maybe?
Say our names until they crawl into a cavern
and echo back out into nothing.
What do you do when the real is lackluster?

Rosie Accola is queer writer and editor who investigates how reality t.v. functions as autofiction. They graduated with their MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University in 2022. They released their first full-length poetry collection, "Referential Body" with Ghost City Press in 2019. You can follow them on Instagram @rosieaccola.