THE
Assembled
CORPUS
Connor Fisher
I am building a new voice. My smallest tools are feathers inside an animal’s mouth. The animal is my tongue. I made myself into an inventory to stem the flood of sounds. My tongue strayed into midnight gardens. I grafted my own fingertips with another’s flayed fingertips. Each fingernail is a fishhook. My elbow’s image haunts the killing jar. A wasp spoke with my voice. My tongue will not return.
CONNOR FISHER is the author of A Renaissance with Eyelids (Schism Press, 2024), The Isotope of I (Schism Press, 2021) and four poetry and hybrid chapbooks including The Unholy Moon (salò press, 2024). He has an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Georgia. His writing has appeared in journals including Denver Quarterly, the Colorado Review, Word for/Word, and Diagram. He currently lives and teaches in northern Mississippi.
The art that appears alongside this piece is by GARRETT FULLER.