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Necessary Ingredients #5 by Sinejan Kılıç Buchina

Capsicum by Ashley Wagner

There’s a
powder blue
cornflower blue
canister in the crevice
of my bag filled
with chili extracts
and attached
to a silver ring tucked
beside The Carrying.
Maybe this
is what Limón meant
when she said, Then
they came: the men
.
The men, like carnivorous
fish under calm
creek water.
The men, like large-
clawed birds.
The men, like riots.
The men, like quiet.
My fear survives
in the ellipses. I
struggle to speak
it to life. It lives
in the dark parts of me
with no names.
No—that isn’t
right. They have names,
no matter how
I turn away.
The amygdala,
for instance. That
reaching
structure, that
claw. Like want
and revulsion
all in one motion.
Everything is happening
all at once. There
are men
in the courts
like the ones
who whistle at me—
no, at my legs,
no, at my breasts,
no, at my feet.
maybe—
on street corners and
on campus and
in the grocery store
so near
to my home where
I buy thin-skinned
plums, Granny
Smiths, and peppers
that I crack my teeth into
that allow me,
for once,
to be the one
who spits fire.


Ashley Wagner recently graduated from Towson University, where she received her MS in Professional Writing. She is the poetry editor for Ligeia Magazine. Her poetry has previously been featured in Grub Street. She lives and works in Baltimore with her partner and their cat, Mocha.

Sinejan Kılıç Buchina is a NY based artist and visual instructor. She is of Circassian-Abkhazian ancestry, born in Turkey. She received her B.F.A. in Art in Istanbul, and continued her education with programs in London and Berlin, and completed her MA in New York. Buchina has exhibited in galleries and institutions throughout New York, London and Istanbul, and is currently working on evolving projects in New York, Sukhum and Istanbul.
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