Perhaps my psychiatric training has made me more conservative. – Charles Ihlenfeld
assigned police
at birth (APAB)
iwe waswere born
pre-womb
a phantasm
embedded
in the marrow
skulking
gunky w the
hunger to
eject the be
coming
illness is an appropriate
body in the polity
state / iwe self
diagnose need
in/exorcise
the must
there’s no
health
in the necro /
corpse’s
white
neverend
iwe worship
the monstrosity
of myour/selves
broken
breath culled
of this infection
in meus is the code
for beginning
to recognize every
imprisoning
signifier of
typology’s
topology
Rose Zinnia (shey/they) is a poet, novelist, essayist, teacher, editor, and designer. Born in Akron, Ohio, she is the author of Togethering (Ledge Mule Press, 2024), a chapbook of poetry & lyric essay. A 2025 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, Zinnia’s honors also include support from Vermont Studio Center, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and the Kinsey Institute. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, CV2, Black Warrior Review, Poem-A-Day, The Journal, Gulf Coast, and West Branch, among others. Zinnia holds an MFA from Indiana University, works at the LGBTQ+ journal Foglifter, and lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Find Rose on Instagram @parareligiousmoss.
