Nicci Mechler splits her time between exploring, spinning tales, and drawing girls with inky tattoos. Her work appears in various literary magazines, chapbooks in these cups (dancing girl press, 2016), how wild & soft you are (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016)—collaboratively penned as Wild Soft—and Deep in Flesh (dancing girl press, 2017). Nicci runs Porkbelly Press, a feminist, queer-friendly micro press, and edits the lit mag Sugared Water. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio with a pack of roommates & rescue animals, and blogs at: damnredshoes.wordpress.com.

HOW TO STARGAZE DANGEROUSLY


Carry dim flashlights from the steps of Knobs Haven. Do not check batteries—this is faith. Traverse grotto. Turn off and dance by the light of a black lake littered with stars. Float wine bottles to cool them. Rest. This is the place where we swim at midnight. It calms us so deeply that even the roar of a truck hurtling by does not coax us from corpse pose. At midnight, move to the water farther from road. Wait. Frogs sluice between us, long legs kick, kick and they croak-sing—flirt poolside. Tell the lives of the warrior women who live here. With quiet tongues, hide their stories deep in flesh, etched in the edge of a wrist bone. There is no room for flinching.