Lannie Stabile | What Do You Say About a Crime That Happened Before You Were Born?

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, often says while some write like a turtleneck sweater, she writes like a Hawaiian shirt. A finalist for the 2019/2020 Glass Chapbook Series and semifinalist for the Button Poetry 2018 Chapbook Contest, she is usually working on new chapbook ideas, or, when desperate, on her neglected YA novel. Works are published/forthcoming in Pidgeonholes, Glass Poetry, 8 Poems, Okay Donkey, Honey & Lime, and more. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective. She was thrice nominated for Best of the Net 2019.

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Also by Lannie Stabile: When Depression Talks Over Me A Parable of Wanderlust Explaining My Introversion to a Genocidist Sympathizer

October 2019

Lannie Stabile

What Do You Say About a Crime That Happened Before You Were Born?

How many notches choke a scrag?// Does the scent of leather change when its compression means death?// Do you commiserate with the bull?// You don’t say anything// You scour Google and drain its troughs of news articles, obituaries, and book excerpts// You become obsessed with a spirit you didn’t know// But somehow know intimately, like a small end rib roast// Some steer are blond-haired and blue-eyed// A genetic predisposition targeted by the Butcher// Those little masticated darlings//

Sitting at the end of the last stanza, you’ll find the titular line for my micro-chap “Little Masticated Darlings,” a series of true crime poems regarding the slayings of two young boys in the summers of 1984 and 1985 by a man who, if fate’s humor was just a bit more twisted where I was concerned, could have been my father. Steer are typically castrated before sexual maturity, and their primary purpose is for beef. This poem is about meat. The juicy discovery of a family secret. The visceral images of Google. The flesh of boys under a savage summer sun.

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