Assistant Editor Lily Davenport: Letitia Jiju’s poem “Litany of Kill” turns to the nonhuman world for rich metaphors of emotional and relational violence: love and punishment emblematized in an anemone-laden mating dance. We’re all fools under its auspices: bitten, ditched, and ready to bite back.
Litany of Kill
Bless the mess of anemone arms
the boxer crab brandishes at his mates.
Bless the fangblenny masquerading
as something of a lesser bite, and the fool
she bites and ditches.
Bless the French Guianese termite, her bag
of suicide, the separate self she rears
each year for detonating.
She nukes body, kin, and colony
for the enemy. Waits her whole life
for one to stumble her way.
In the nineteenth year, my therapist asked
if I’d ever loved anyone.
I said yes. Everyone
I punished.
Letitia Jiju is interested in the poetry of wave functions, quarks and the little things. Her work appears/is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Poet Lore, Denver Quarterly, Arc Magazine, Passages North, and elsewhere. She reads fiction for Longleaf Review and poetry for Psaltery & Lyre. Aside from writing, she is an electronics and communications engineer and works in international trade. Find her on Instagram/Twitter @eaturlettuce, Bluesky @letitia.bsky.social.
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