MUZZLE MAGAZINE
  • Home
  • Fall 2022
  • Submissions
  • Archives
  • Blog

Advice for the Newly Single

BY ELAINA ELLIS

Be a fierce dragon lonely queen,
Emma. Be a drunk barren 

crowbar. Be a cocktail waitress heart-sewn
tease. Be a desert plant, Susie,

succulent. Need no water at hand.
Be an empty-fridge sale salad 

scrimper. Be a sharp-tongued solo
chef. Anna: watch TV on a lonely moon 

through the static of milky way
reception. Concentrate 

on falling asleep. Slut,
Mona. Slut your book open. 

Keep your legs open.
Do not write any name but 

your name on those acre-wide
pages. Be hollow, 

Sally. Keep canary-singing
in a thirsty well. Be a singing 

flighty bird with open beak.
Don’t try a cushion, 

Mary.  Don’t swallow soft. 
Chew only sticks: carrots, twigs.  

Sit on your bones.
Sit on their bones.  

Don’t try for dreams.
Don’t try for dollars,
Leah, this is a coin job
for you. Turn out the light.
Tear out your eyes. 

ELAINA ELLIS quit her day job in January 2010 to make poetry the boss of her.  She is a Creative Writing student at the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA program, a teacher at Bent Writing Institute in Seattle, and the founder of TumbleMe Productions.  Her first full-length collection of poetry, Write About an Empty Birdcage, is forthcoming from Write Bloody Publishing.  Elaina writes to worship, to recover, to seduce, to fight back, to play, to confess, and to make mess.  

ISSN 2157-8079
  • Home
  • Fall 2022
  • Submissions
  • Archives
  • Blog