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  • Home
  • Nostrovia! Press archive
    • Former N!P Home Page >
      • Bartenders
      • How do we distribute?
    • Poetry Contest >
      • 2020 Winners
    • Chapbooks >
      • Full Catalog >
        • 2018 Chapbooks
        • 2017 Chapbooks >
          • Loathe/Love/Lathe by Aeon Ginsberg
          • our own soft by Katie Clark
          • every time i park my car I feel like i'm doing something wrong by Joseph Parker Okay
        • 2016 Chapbooks >
          • I Was Talking About Love—You Are Talking About Geography by Bob Sykora
          • Make a Fist & Tongue the Knuckles by Emily O'Neill
          • I Can Remember the Meaning of Every Tarot Card But I Can’t Remember What I Texted You Last Night by Elle Nash
        • 2015 Chapbooks >
          • Moon Facts by Bob Schofield
          • Juliet II by Sarah Xerta
          • Bird Lizard Horse by August Smith
    • F/A/L/D >
      • Current Issue
      • Archives >
        • Issue #014
        • Issue #013
        • Issue #012
        • Issue #011
        • Issue #010
        • Issue #009
        • Issue #008
        • Issue #007
        • Issue #006
        • Issue #005
        • Issue #004
        • Issue #003
        • Issue #002
        • Issue #001
    • Traveling Bookstore
Nostrovia! Press
"O, what a clamorous lineage

I was screamed into."

Lyd Havens 

Picture
Lyd Havens is a poet, performer, and Harry Styles impersonator originally from Tucson, Arizona. Their work has previously been published in Winter Tangerine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Up the Staircase Quarterly, among others. Lyd is currently an undergraduate at Boise State University, studying creative writing and history. They exist at www.lydhavens.com
"Invocation for my Own Voice"   
O, all the places I’ve yelled
while still coming off as quiet:

into an ocean. Across a mosh pit.
With a mouthful of pillow and rage.

All those humid dive bars I had
no right to be in. At poetry slams.

Do you know how often I think
of the hinges on all the doors in

my childhood home? I think
of how they squealed and whined

and begged when my father
came home angry, then left

the same way. I’ve always been terrified
of raising my voice, so I’ve learned

all the ways I can safely make a
racket without beginning

to turn into him. I am a floor
covered in bobby pins. The heaviest

pair of feet christening a flight
of stairs. O, what a clamorous lineage

I was screamed into. The first time
I actually yelled back, it wasn’t

at my father. It was at a boy
I had a crush on. He called it cute.

Said I didn’t look like the bitchy type,
but that was a good try. Lord, give me

the strength and power of every man
who believes himself to be

the most scared knife-prayer. Just once,
I want my throat to drip in garnet stones

and spite without feeling the weight
of guilt I should have never been

cornered into. I want a healthy coping
mechanism that still allows me to be

heard. Where do I find something like that?
When will the hum of the happy hour crowd

downtown stop feeling like
the anger management class I never

got to take? When did being angry
become synonymous with being alive?

Is this what I was always meant to be?
Once, I wanted to stop having a body,

and I guess now I have to be all voice.
Last summer, I told my mother I was

thinking of buying a pocket knife, in case I ever
needed it for protection. She looked me

up and down, like I had only just started
being her child, and said,

That’s ridiculous. Look at you. You’d be better off
getting a whistle.

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