Sweater Weather

Now is the time to make things. You got the hot jazz you wanted, 30 reams, a bay window, my lower belly, and that large art deco piece. Now the goal is to drink better and better bottles of wine, so when with smart colleagues, never hoot, “Best wine in the world!” It gets better. Ignore massive, mounting pain. Focus on getting a job in your field. Only one of us did, and it's not scary talking to inmates, she says, because you're just Skyping with them really, they don't even know your full real name. The bed is finally the right size, still most nights we just fall in shivering with our three-step regimens and rarely you touch me. Costa Rica is on the fridge like a branding iron on my flank. There are too many splinters in my new desk and me.

If I call out, I want to use my full real name.

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Joni Renee Whitworth is a poet and community organizer from rural Oregon. They have performed at The Moth, the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts, and the Museum of Contemporary Art alongside Marina Abramovic. Whitworth served as the inaugural Artist in Residence at Portland Parks and Recreation, Poet in Residence for Oregon State University's Trillium Project, and 2020 Queer Hero for the Gay & Lesbian Archives of the Pacific Northwest. Their writing explores themes of nature, future, family, and the neurodivergent body, and has appeared in Lambda Literary, Tin House, Oregon Humanities, Proximity Magazine, Seventeen Magazine, Eclectica, Pivot, SWWIM, Smeuse, Superstition Review, xoJane, Inverted Syntax, Unearthed Literary Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Dime Show Review, and The Write Launch.