At Twelve
Lydia presses push pins into cork board.
She crucifies her evidence,
crossing red twine from article to photo.
She listens on the other line
of her older brother’s phone calls.
She is two steps ahead of sneaking out of bedroom windows.
Lydia cuts her elementary school scrunchies
to make bookmarks for Nancy Drew.
She writes her diary entries with glitter glue and
cutting letters from TEEN MAGAZINE.
Lydia sits outside the door when her mother cleans
just to smell the bleach.
She holds a handful of pills in the dark
to see how her sister felt with keys wedged between her fingers.
Lydia steals the library's tapes of 48 Hours
to calculate the time it’d take for the cops to find her body.
She stares at the 12 hours looking back at her.
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To Be Turned Palatable
I used to think that little kids stared at me
because I was ugly.
And then I convinced myself
that it was because I am beautiful.
My dad told me a story once.
When he was young
he went to the movie theater,
and a kid who was around 8 years old,
only a little younger than my dad,
was in the row behind him.
He overheard the kid
whisper to his father
that it was his first time
seeing a black person
in real life.
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CORRINE GLENN is a Jamaican-American poet and 2025 Adroit Journal Mentorship graduate, with interviews published in Apricus Literary. She is based in South Carolina and works as an editor for The Govie Gazette.